


Drive the Dark Away

by thepartyresponsible



Series: Do Every Stupid Thing [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Minor Character Death, Team as Family, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 08:47:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 57,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13586529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepartyresponsible/pseuds/thepartyresponsible
Summary: They take Tony.It happens when the world should know better. When the whole damn world should know that Tony belongs to them, that they don’t share, that, between the two of them, they can be meaner, harsher, crueler than anyone else on the planet.They take Tony, and disappear into the desert.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for SuperNekofan and anyone else who wanted to see Tony becoming Iron Man in this verse. Fair warning, it's...you know. Never a happy story. There probably won't be anything too graphic, but mind the tags. 
> 
> Title taken from "Amy A.K.A Spent Gladiator I" by The Mountain Goats.

                They take Tony.

                It happens when the world should know better. When the whole damn world should know that Tony belongs to them, that they don’t share, that, between the two of them, they can be meaner, harsher, crueler than anyone else on the planet.

                They take Tony, and disappear into the desert.

                Rhodey calls as soon as he wakes up. He asks to talk to Bucky, because they have that whole military service connection, tend to get along better, but Bucky’s gone radio silent, so he has to talk to Jason, instead.

                 “You know where he is?” Rhodey’s voice is static-y over the phone, and sluggish on top of that. He’s still too drugged up to be much use. Jason wants to hang up immediately.

                “No one knows where he is,” Jason says.  

                It’s been forty-eight hours. Jason is losing his Goddamn mind.

                SHIELD pulled their closest six agents off their missions, sent them all to the area to recover him, but they came up with nothing. Natasha’s in deep enough that she needs another seventy-two hours to make a graceful exit, and Clint’s up a Goddamn tree somewhere, scheduled for a hit he can’t miss.

                It’s just been Jason, stuck here with Bucky, who will not fucking talk to him, and Coulson, who manages to throw a few updates at him in-between fielding a call every five seconds, trying to finish Natasha’s mission, and Clint’s mission, while also coordinating the redirection of all available agents to the search for Tony Stark.

                Jason gives SHIELD forty-eight hours, and then he goes to Gotham. It does not go well. He’s wound too tight by the time he gets there, and Bruce is missing, has just fucking disappeared off the face of the planet like he somehow sensed Jason was going to need him and broke the sound barrier dodging any and all obligations to help. So Jason tears through the Batcave like a nightmare, wrecking whatever looked most expensive and yelling at Alfred.

                _Alfred_. He yells at _Alfred_.

                And then, somehow even worse, he practically roughs up Oracle, trying to get answers she doesn’t have. Dick and Bruce and even little Tim are going to fucking disembowel him for it, which is fine, which he deserves, and the shittiest part is that it isn’t even worth it, because she doesn’t know a damn thing.  

                “I already looked, Jason,” she says, her tone lost between confusion and pity. She has blood on her mouth. Jason put it there. Backhanded her like a shitty pimp. What the _fuck_. “Of course I did. We all did. We’re all looking for him.”

                “Well, stop looking and just fucking _find him_. I know you fucking people don’t give a shit, never fucking look for anyone, but he’s not a Bat, alright? He’s Tony fucking Stark. You _find him_.”

Jason drives back to SHIELD only to get kicked right back out on his ass, because Bruce Wayne – who’s too damn busy to answer Jason’s calls or show up when Jason needs him – has called Coulson to bitch about Jason’s _troublesome behavior_ in Gotham.

                “Tell him to get fucked,” Jason suggests, while Coulson covers the mouthpiece on his phone and directs a pleading gaze heavenward. “Tell him that I said to get--”

                “Jason,” Coulson says. It shuts Jason up immediately. He sounds tired, which is normal, and quiet, which is not. It’s _weird_. Jason’s never heard him sound like that before. It makes Jason want to yell, and throw desks, and kill someone with his hands. “I am doing everything I can. I need you to go home, and sleep.”

                “I’m not gonna sleep while Tony is---” Jason throws his hands up, because he doesn’t know _where_ Tony is, or what’s happening to him, and that’s the crux of the whole damn thing. He can’t brace for a hit that he can’t see coming. Ever since the first shots were reported, he’s been in freefall. “Fuck you, Coulson. I am not going _home_.”

                “No one’s heard from Bucky for twelve hours,” Coulson says. “Go home and make sure we still have a super soldier. We may need one.”

                “He’s a fucking robot right now, Coulson.” Jason shakes his head and crosses his arms over his chest. “I am _not_ going home. Fuck you, I’m helping.”

                Coulson takes a deep breath and closes his eyes for a second. “Jason,” he says, slowly, “the best case scenario right now is that we find out where he is, and we need to plan a rescue mission. Natasha’s coming back after a four-week solo op. I can’t put her in the field for at least three days _after_ medical clears her, and I have no idea what the wait will be for Clint, because he is, as usual, refusing to accurately report his status.”

                “What the fuck does that matter? He’s not— Tony’s _ours_. We’re going after him, Bucky and me. It’s us.”

                “You haven’t slept in two days. I have no idea what state Barnes is in, because he will not answer his phone, and now one’s seen him, except you, for two days. And I can’t rely on your judgement, because you just trashed the Batcave and punched an ally in the mouth.” He gives Jason a long, assessing look. “Right now, if we got the call that they’d found him, I’d pass this mission to another team.”

                It hits like a gut punch. Jason wants to throw Coulson’s desk at him. He wants to throw Coulson’s entire _office_ at him.

                “ _Fuck_ you,” Jason says, stepping closer.

                Coulson shakes his head, sharp and disapproving, and he stands up as Jason gets closer. With the hand not cradling the phone, he gestures over Jason’s shoulder. “ _Out_ ,” he says. “Get out. Go _home_. I’ll come by later with whatever we have, but Jason, for God’s sake, get some sleep. I know you’re worried about him. I know you’re not emotionally equipped to handle this, but go home and fake it convincingly enough for me to keep you in the field. Or I _will_ pull you. I will.”

                Jason opens his mouth one more time, and Phil cuts him off, jabbing that same finger toward the door. “Go _home_.”

                Jason goes.

 

Bucky is at home, sitting in the living room with the lights off, being a Goddamn melodramatic son of a bitch. Jason kicks the door shut hard enough to shake the walls and then drops pizza on the coffee table in front of Bucky.

“Eat something,” he says.

                He could be less of an asshole. He _wants_ to be less of an asshole. But there’s not enough room in his head for panic _and_ good manners, so he must’ve thrown good manners out to die about five minutes after he heard Tony was shot and then _stolen_ in Afghanistan.

                Wordlessly, Bucky flips open the pizza box and reaches inside. He starts eating, neatly and mechanically, and Jason knows he is so, so fucked, because Bucky’s eating the wrong half of the damn pizza.

                He watches Bucky for a second and then goes into the kitchen, grabs the whiskey off the shelf, and sits down on the floor with his back to the island, where Bucky can’t see him from the doorway. He downs three long swallows before he sets the bottle by his knee.

                He doesn’t even like this whiskey. He’d bought it to impress Tony. He made Barbara give him suggestions, and she’d been amused but indulgent, and she’ll probably never help him again because he slapped her across the mouth.

                Everything’s fucked.

                Tony’s gone, and Bucky’s obeying orders like all the years they’ve spent pulling the Winter Soldier out of his brain have disappeared, and Nat and Clint aren’t here, and Coulson’s pissed at him, because Jason is being an asshole to everyone who looks at him.

                His phone rings. He looks at the name – _Maria Stark_ – and puts the phone down carefully on the tile. He takes another drink.

After a while, the phone stops ringing, and then he hears Bucky’s start up in the other room.

                Bucky doesn’t answer, either. Eventually, that phone stops ringing, too.

Jason drinks until everything’s fuzzy around the edges, until he couldn’t answer a call even if Coulson made one. Almost three days, and no word about ransom. If Tony’s still alive, it isn’t about money. And if it’s not about money, then they won’t be making contact at all.

                They’re going to try to drag every useful thing out of Tony’s brain.

                Jason climbs to his feet, using the kitchen counter to steady him, and then he wanders his way into the living room. Bucky is right where he left him, although about a third of the pizza is gone.

                “Come on,” he says. “We’re going to bed.”

                Bucky nods at his hands and then stands up. He walks easily down the hallway, unburdened by multiple shots of whiskey, and he’s in their bathroom, brushing his teeth, by the time Jason makes it to their bedroom.

                Jason kicks off his shoes and socks, throws his shirt and jeans onto the pile of dirty clothes in the corner, and climbs into bed.

                Bucky joins him a few minutes later, a silent, tense presence on the other side of the bed. A few minutes pass and then Bucky exhales hard, like he’s been hurt by something.

                “I’m sorry,” he says, quietly. Jason turns to look at him, but Bucky’s staring at the ceiling. “I’m sorry. I’m not helping.”

                Jason doesn’t know what to do. He wants to reach over, wants to pull him in and curl around him. He knows that’s what Tony would do, if Tony were here. But Tony’s never looked at Bucky and really understood what he’s capable of. Ever since Tony led a shakey Winter Soldier out of his testing chamber and tried to carry him upstairs to take a shower, Tony’s never seen Bucky as any kind of threat.

                Jason knows better. Bucky’s not well right now. And neither is Jason. And without Tony, their rough edges are far more likely to catch against each other.

                Jason keeps his distance. It’s the only way he knows to keep Bucky safe. “Get your head right, Buck,” he says. “I hate being alone like this.”

                “I’m sorry,” Bucky says, again.

               

 

 

                In the morning, Jason hears voices in the kitchen. He should care about that, probably, but he’s exhausted, and hungover, and Bucky’s disappearing into the living room, gun drawn, so Jason figures he’ll go if there are gunshots.

                A few minutes later, the bedroom door pushes open and a weight, too light to be Bucky or Tony, settles on the edge of his bed.

                “Hey,” Natasha says, quietly. “You look like shit.”

                “Yeah, my boyfriend’s being tortured right now,” Jason grumbles, pulling the blankets over his head in what he hopes is a very clear gesture. “Fuck off, I’m mourning.”

                “No reason to think he’s dead,” she says. “He’s useful. They’d want to keep him alive until he wasn’t useful anymore. And we’ve trained up his pain tolerance. He’d last longer than this.”

                “God,” Jason says. He thinks he might throw up, in his own damn bed, like he’s a teenager all over again, still learning his limits. “ _God_ , Nat. That’s--”

                “I’m not going to lie to you.” Nat’s voice is soft, but not apologetic. “If you want comfort, go cry to your father. He’s in the kitchen.”

                Jason groans and sits up, shoving the blankets back and rubbing at his face. “He’s not my dad.”

                “And yet,” Natasha says, sliding to her feet, “you knew exactly who I was talking about.”

                “What the fuck is Bruce doing here anyway?” Jason says, kicking around on the floor for the cleanest, closest clothes. “He was missing, last I heard.”

                “Yes,” Natasha says, with a roll of her eyes, “missing.”

                Jason throws a t-shirt at her, and she dodges it easily before heading toward the door. “Coulson’s out here, too,” she says. “Barton’s inbound. His plane landed half an hour ago. Medical should release him soon.”

                “I thought you two weren’t going to be back for another couple days,” Jason says, finally finding something that looks reasonably clean. It’s Bucky’s shirt, but that doesn’t matter.

                Natasha gives him a steady look. “Jason,” she says, slowly, “somebody stole a member of my team.”

The way she says it – the _threat_ in it – unlocks some of the tension in Jason’s chest. No one’s said it yet. No one’s going to say it for a while. But there’s a chance that Tony is already dead, and Jason knows, in that moment, that if someone’s killed Tony, Natasha will help him get even.

                Coulson’s too steady-tempered, and Barton can flinch at messier work, and Jason doesn’t know what the hell is going on in Bucky’s head right now, but Nat’s with him on this. He’s not alone.  

                He takes what feels like the first deep breath since the news broke. And then he pulls the shirt on, buying himself enough time to get his face in line.

                “Get dressed,” Natasha says. “They’re waiting for you in the kitchen.”

 

 

 

                Bucky’s in the living room, with a plate full of a breakfast so nutritionally well-balanced that Jason knows immediately who made it. And he knows damn well they didn’t have any avocadoes in the house last night, so Coulson must have gone shopping before he headed over.

                Coulson’s a caretaker. He tries to keep it quiet, but it manifests when he’s stressed, or tired. They used to fight about it, but Jason’s mostly given up. At least the food’s always good.

                He touches Bucky’s shoulder as he passes. He can’t think of a single thing to say to him, but he presses his hand against him, palm spanning from metal to skin, and Bucky reaches up, curls his hand around Jason’s wrist for a second before letting go.

                Jason wants to sit next to him, lean into him and pick off his plate, maybe go back to sleep with his head on Bucky’s shoulder or in his lap. But he hit Barbara yesterday and menaced Coulson in his own Goddamn office, so he knows he needs to deal with whatever’s waiting for him in the kitchen. He could say here and hide with Bucky, but, if things get loud, he doesn’t need Bucky trying to pick a side out of what remains of his team.

                “Hey,” Jason says, from the kitchen doorway. He stands awkwardly, shoulder pressed to the frame, and feels out-of-place in his own home.

                Coulson’s standing over the stovetop, flipping an omelet one-handed while he pours coffee into a mug with the other. He’s wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday, but the suit jacket’s hanging over one of the kitchen barstools, and he’s rolled his sleeves up past his elbows.

                Clint’s said for years that you can tell exactly how fucked they are by how much skin Coulson’s showing. Jason tries not to read too much into that, but he winces, a little, when Coulson turns to look at him and he realizes that Coulson’s lost his tie, too.

                The top two buttons of his shirt are undone, and Jason thinks, loud and a little panicked, _we’re fucked, he’s fucked, Tony’s already dead_.

                “Morning,” Coulson says, eyebrows rising as he takes in the state of Jason. He pauses for a second, flicks a glance at Bruce, and then turns to take a cup down from the cabinet. “Drink some water,” he says. “Two glasses before you get any coffee. You look terrible.”

                “For fuck’s sake,” Jason says. “I live here. This is my _house_. Bucky’s got a paper that says so.”

                Coulson stares at him for a moment, and then shrugs. “I didn’t realize you felt well enough to fight about it.” He fills the glass full of tap water and drops it on the kitchen island. “Just one’s probably fine, then.”

                Jason rolls his eyes, but he moves across the kitchen and picks up the glass. It puts him regrettably close to Bruce, which means he actually has to look at him.

                Bruce is sitting at the kitchen bar, lounging in one of Jason’s barstools like he has a right to be here, and he’s got a plate full of half-eaten breakfast, an empty cup of coffee, and a glass of water he seems disinclined to drink. He’s watching Jason carefully.

                Jason has never invited Bruce to his house. It never occurred to him that Bruce would ever actually want to visit.

                “The hell have you been,” Jason says, too aggressively to be a real question. “I went to Gotham, looking for you. I _called_ you.”

                Bruce stares at him. After a moment, he takes a neat bite of Coulson’s bullshit wheat toast, and then chews his way through it, methodical and slow. Jason sips his water and considers throwing the whole glass at his face.

                “I was working,” Bruce says, finally.

                “Yeah, okay,” Jason says, putting his water down. “That’s it. Truce is over. We’re fighting. Coulson, I know your rules about crowding you in the kitchen, but I’m going for the knives in about two seconds, so--”

                “Bruce,” Coulson says, and Jason is gratified that Coulson used that tone, but he is absolutely mystified that Bruce actually seems slightly cowed by it. “Tell him where you’ve been. I’m not cleaning this kitchen twice in one day.”

                Bruce considers Coulson for a long moment and then looks over at Jason. “I went to Talia,” he says.

                “Why the hell would you go to _Talia_?” Jason says. “The League didn’t fucking take him. Christ, Bruce, not everything is about your weird, bullshit life and your fucked-up relationships with everyone you’ve ever f--”

                “To ask,” Bruce says, loudly, “for help.”

                “You what,” Jason says, blinking.

                For a second, Bruce looks entirely too smug, and Jason almost heaves the water at him after all, but then Bruce shrugs and looks down at his breakfast. “She has connections that I don’t have,” he says, finally. “And she has regrets, concerning you, that made it possible to convince her to help.”

                Jason doesn’t move or blink or say anything. He and Bruce have never talked about what kind of regrets Talia might have about him. After a moment, he turns beseeching eyes to Coulson.

                “We’re hardly in the position to turn down help,” Coulson says. He passes a plate to Jason, and then, after a moment, sets a cup of coffee in front of him, which is how Jason knows he’s been forgiven. “We’ve picked up a few other non-traditional allies, too.” He looks up, sends some kind of unreadable look to Bruce, and Bruce blinks, which is odd enough, but then breaks the stare first, which is even worse.

                “Superman’s off-world,” he says, after a beat. “But Wonder Woman’s searching.”

                Jason stares at him. “You asked the Justice League to look for my missing boyfriend?”

                “He’s not a cat that wandered off,” Bruce says, almost defensive. “I’ve seen what he builds when he’s trying to _minimize_ collateral damage. If they convince him to work for them, the body count will be--”

                “No,” Jason says, cutting him off, “that’s not why you did it. Don’t bullshit me. I _know_ you. If that’s all you were worried about, you wouldn’t be in such a rush. You went to _Talia_. You’re doing it this way because it’s _him_. Because you’re worried about him. Because you want to find him quickly.”

                Bruce blinks at him. He looks faintly baffled, which is an odd look for him. “Jason,” he says, “you’ve been with him for years.”

                “Holy shit,” Jason says, clutching his perfectly balanced breakfast to his chest. “You _care_ about him.”

                Bruce stares at him, jaw tense, and then looks to Coulson, like he’s asking for some kind of intervention.

                Coulson pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep, steadying breath. “Jason,” Coulson says, “he’s doing this because he cares about _you_.”

                Jason just stares at him, and Coulson gestures, a little helplessly, with his hands. “I mean, also Tony. Of course Tony. But mainly _you_.”

                “Bullshit,” Jason says, shooting Bruce a quick, dubious look that’s meant to be a shared sort of _what the fuck?_ but it misses the mark, primarily because Bruce is staring down at his avocado toast like it’s personally responsible for this conversation.

                “The fuck,” Jason says, softly, to no one. He drains his glass of water, and wonders if maybe he’s still a little drunk.

                 “I want you to know,” Coulson says, “that I have been a SHIELD agent for most of my adult life. I was a Ranger before that. And the two of you are the reason I have high blood pressure.”

                “The _two_ of us?” Jason feels insulted, but he’s grateful for the distraction. He knows what to do with insulted. “Why does _he_ get to be a reason? You see him like twice a year. What the _hell_.”

                “Really not what you were meant to focus on, Jay,” Natasha says, breezing in. “Any of this for me, Coulson? Clint’s five minutes out. Medical says he’s benched for four days, but I think we can negotiate to half of that.”

                “We don’t negotiate with Medical, Natasha,” Coulson says, taking a pre-made plate out of the oven and passing it to her. “They’re _Medical_ , not car salesmen.”

                Natasha shrugs and steals Jason’s coffee right out of his hand. “Yeah, but all the doctors are scared of me. And nothing’s broken. It’s just fatigue. I’ll feed him, tranq him, tuck him in, and he’ll be fine in twelve hours.”

                “Natasha,” Coulson says, sounding exasperated, “we’ve been over this. If anyone’s going to sedate a member of this team, it’s going to be me.”

                “ _I’m_ the reason you have high blood pressure?” Jason points his fork at Natasha, incredulous. She rolls her eyes, but she gives his coffee back.

                Coulson hesitates for a second. “I’ll allow that it might be a group effort.”             

                “Speaking of,” Bruce says, having apparently finished communing silently with his breakfast, “we need to talk about how we’re going to coordinate this. The Justice League doesn’t work for SHIELD. And neither does Talia.”

                “Yeah, Bruce,” Jason says, rolling his eyes, “everyone’s real fucking aware that you’re an evasive asshole who doesn’t let other people play with his toys.”

                “If I stay here,” Bruce continues, apparently deaf to Jason’s comment and blind to the look of horror Jason throws his way at that opener, “it leaves Gotham vulnerable. Nightwing needs to go back to Blüdhaven eventually.”

                Coulson and Bruce exchange another look, and then Coulson nods. “Alright,” he says, like they’ve reached some sort of agreement. “I’ll send Clint up to Gotham, with Maria Hill. Nonlethal methods. Robin leads.”

                Beside him, Jason feels Natasha go tense. She sets her plate down on the kitchen bar and looks over at Coulson. “Send one of us with him,” she says. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, any member of the team being anywhere alone.”

                Coulson tips his head to the side, considering it. “Tony was targeted,” he says. “Not the team.”

                “Tony went somewhere alone,” Natasha says. “And Tony got taken. You want to gamble Barton on that being the end of it? I’d rather not find out it’s a pattern after we’re down our mechanic _and_ our sniper.”

                “Alright,” Coulson says. “You can go with him.”

                “I’ll go,” Bucky says. The whole kitchen turns to see him standing silently in the doorway. He’s holding himself tense and still, practically at parade rest.

                No one says anything. Jason realizes, after a few seconds, that they’re all waiting on him. “What,” he says, because that’s the only thing in his head.

                “Natasha doesn’t excel at nonlethal,” Bucky says. “Neither do you, when you’re emotional.”

                “I’m not emotional,” Jason says. “I’m just not a fucking _robot_.” He’s being an asshole again. It’s fine with Bruce. Coulson too, to a lesser degree. It’s _not_ fine with Bucky, at least not right now.

                He wants to be better. But this is the problem, with the pair of them. When things go bad, Bucky regresses to the Winter Soldier, and Jason falls back to the Pit, and they need Tony. It doesn’t work without Tony. _They_ don’t work without him.

                But that doesn’t mean he wants Bucky to disappear on him, either.

                “Natasha can work within the parameters,” Coulson says. That’s not a no. Jason tightens his hand around his coffee mug. “It might be better if you stay here.”

                “It won’t be better,” Bucky says. It would hurt less, probably, if he sounded at least a little fucked up about it. “I can’t stay here,” he says, after a beat, and Jason realizes that he was wrong. It doesn’t hurt any less.

                “Fine,” Jason says. He leaves his breakfast and his coffee, shoves himself away from the kitchen island, and heads for the only way out. “Have fun in Gotham,” he says, as he shoulders past Bucky. “Don’t get fucking murdered.”


	2. Chapter 2

                Bucky and Clint leave two days later, when Medical’s convinced to clear Clint, and Jason’s almost relieved to see them go. The tense, miserable silence between him and Bucky is doing absolutely nothing positive for anyone. But he still has to leave while Bucky packs. He can’t stand the bullshit _he’s leaving, he’s leaving, he’s leaving_ chatter in his mind.

                He goes running with Natasha, and she rolls her eyes when he starts chain-smoking midway through their route, but she’s merciful enough not to say anything until they’re about half a mile out.

                “Clint’ll worry,” she says, as she plucks the cigarette out of his mouth and tosses it into a nearby birdbath.

                “That’s shitty,” Jason says, craning his neck to look back. “That’s shitty what you just did. You’re gonna give the birds cancer.”            

                Natasha doesn’t bother commenting on that. They jog up to the driveway right as Clint’s dropping his duffle bag in the back of their SHIELD-assigned car. It’s fancier than it needs to be, and, if they’re not careful, it’s going to get stolen within their first week in Gotham.

                Not that it matters. Not that they’re ever not careful. The two of them, they’re the steadiest ones on the team, after Coulson.

                “Hey,” Clint says, wandering over to meet them. “Thought you guys were gonna miss the goodbyes.”

                “Please. You know how he is.” Natasha jerks her chin toward Jason. “Never misses a chance to make a scene.”

                “Oh, right.” Jason makes a face and keeps his eyes on Clint, refuses to look toward the house like a sad puppy whining after scraps. “Which one of us pulled a double homicide while literally _on stage_ last year?”

                “That,” Natasha says, “was a thing of beauty. You’re just jealous you don’t look as good in a leotard.”

                Jason rolls his eyes. “I look Goddamn breathtaking in a leotard.”

                “Yeah,” Clint says, with a grimace, “I’m having trouble breathing just _thinking_ about it.”

                “I’m not gonna miss you,” Jason tells him. “Not at all, jackass.”

                Clint smirks over at him, looking completely unrepentant. “Guess Robin’ll have to keep me company, instead.”

                “Gross,” Jason says, with feeling. “For the record, that shit is still gross.”

                Natasha hums, low and thoughtful, and gives Clint a searching look before glancing toward Jason. “You wanna put money on either one of them actually making a move this time?”

                “No,” Jason says. “I don’t wanna put money on that. I don’t even want to think about it.”

                “Hey, Barnes,” Natasha says, calling up the driveway toward Bucky, who’s just stepping out the front door. “You wanna put money on Clint getting into Robin’s tights?”

                Bucky hesitates and glances quickly over his shoulder. “No,” he says, after a beat. “I don’t want to do that.”

                “Bruce is right behind you, huh?” Natasha says, and then pitches her voice a little louder. “Hey, Bruce, do you want to--”

                “No,” Bruce says, appearing behind Bucky. “Thank you for including me. Please don’t ever include me again.”

                “I’ll put money on it,” Coulson says, in that especially pleasant tone he saves for times when he is rapidly losing patience, “if it means that Barnes and Barton leave at something even vaguely approximating their assigned departure time.”

                “Yikes,” Clint says, under his breath. “He’s tense. You’ll keep an eye on him right, Nat?” He looks legitimately concerned, and that’s odd enough that Jason notices it, despite the fact that he’s been resolutely not noticing a damn thing around him since Bucky appeared.

                 “No one ever looks after him,” Clint adds, shifting his weight and frowning up toward the house.

                Jason wants to tell him that Phil Coulson looks after the whole damn world, so it’s his own fault that there’s no one left to return the favor, but, honestly, it’s never occurred to him that anyone would _need_ to. And, for a second, he doesn’t know why the hell Clint would elect himself – or, as backup, _Natasha_ – to that position, but then he remembers that Bucky’s brainfucked, and Tony’s gone.

                Natasha just smiles though, small and oddly smug, like she has a secret she’s not sharing. She pulls Barton in, one hand around the back of his head, foreheads pressed together while they do their murder-twin mind-meld, and Jason looks away, not sure what to do with himself now that everyone’s settling into their normal pre-mission traditions.

                Usually, he’d have Bucky against a wall by this point, trying to get him as mussed as possible before Coulson starts yelling. Doesn’t feel right this time.

                He stands next to the car, hands at his sides, and stares hard at the pavement until Bucky’s boots appear in front of him.

                “I’ll come back,” Bucky says, voice soft and earnest but otherwise devoid of emotion. “As soon as we get word about him, I’ll come back.”

                _Yeah_ , Jason thinks, _but what if we don’t get word? What if we don’t make it in time? What if he’s already dead?_

And _Why are you leaving? Why are you leaving me **alone**?_

They’ve got work to do, though. And maybe it’ll be easier to be alone when Bucky’s in another city than it has been to be alone for the past five days, with Bucky right beside him but just fucking _gone_.

                “Great,” Jason says, “super. Don’t chase clowns, don’t let Ivy slip you anything, and don’t fuck Grayson. Three rules of Gotham.” He pauses, flounders a little. “Oh, and tell Alfred I’m sorry.”

                “Jason,” Bucky says, “I _will_ come back.”

                “Yeah,” Jason says, “I know. All your guns are here.”

                Bucky goes quiet, and Jason can hear Clint and Natasha talking, murmuring back and forth, and he thinks he should pull away, go tell Clint to be _careful_ in Gotham, not to let Robin’s skittishness about violence get the pair of them killed, but he’s stuck in place, waiting.

                He doesn’t even know what the hell he’s waiting for. Maybe he just wants to make Bucky take the first steps away.

                “Buck,” Clint calls over, “we gotta go. Coulson’s gonna throw his watch at us.”

                “I’m sorry,” Bucky says, to Jason. It sounds like it hurts. Jason looks up, startled, and he’s hated the blankness on Bucky’s face, but he hates this even more. “I’ll be back.”

                “I know,” Jason says, because he _does_. He knows Bucky. He knows exactly how dedicated he is, how endlessly driven. But coming back won’t help anything if there’s nothing to come back to. Jason knows the risk isn’t that Bucky won’t come back. It’s that, by the time he does, Jason will have left.

                It’s not his fault. Or, at least, it’s not something he can help. He died once, watching a countdown tick to zero. He doesn’t have it in him to wait for time to run out all over again.

                Jason rocks back on his heels, starts to step away, and Bucky moves in fast, fists his metal hand in Jason’s shirt and slides the other in Jason’s hair, and then they’re kissing, right there, in front of God and Coulson.

                It’s the wrong kind of kiss. Usually, when Jason does this before one of them goes on a mission, it’s not quite an act, but it’s sure as hell a spectacle. He does it knowing other people will see. They’re _meant_ to see.

                This is sweeter than it should be. It’s the kind of soft, careful bullshit Bucky does when Jason wakes up in Medical, swimming his way to consciousness against an ocean of shushing opioids, or when Jason comes out of a nightmare, heaving and swinging until Bucky can pin him down, draw that panic out of him.

                It’s not something Jason ever wanted anyone other than Tony and Bucky to see. It feels weird and wrong, even though it’s just Nat and Clint and Coulson and Bruce, who have all damn sure seen him doing worse things. He wants to pull away, pretend it never happened, tell himself no one saw anything, but he can’t make himself stop, because some stupid, hysterical part of him is convinced this is the last time he’ll ever get kissed like this.

                He doesn’t know what they are, without Tony. But he knows there won’t be much sweetness left.

                “I’m coming back,” Bucky says, when he finally pulls away. His mouth is an inch from Jason’s, and Jason thinks there’s no way in hell Coulson’s going to drag him away if Jason just keeps kissing him, but he holds himself still anyway.

                “I _am_ ,” Bucky says. “I love you.”

                “Yeah,” Jason says. He clears his throat. “I know you do, asshole.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist and stares hard over Bucky’s shoulder. “Be careful in Gotham. It’s a shitty town.”

                Bucky nods, kisses him one more time, and then grabs his bag and heads for the car. Jason walks away, moves quickly up the sidewalk and into the house while Coulson and Bruce step out of the way. He slams the door shut behind him, but he’s not angry any more.

                If they think he’s pissed, they’ll give him space. He needs it.

 

 

 

                Natasha moves into the guest room. It doesn’t make any damn sense, because, even though she and Clint have their own place these days, they still have rooms at Coulson’s house. Nat’s been very insistent that no one goes anywhere alone, and no one objects because Nat, in general, is a bad person to pick a fight with, but the reasonable thing to do is put Natasha with Coulson and put Bruce in the guest room at Jason and Bucky’s place.

                “Yeah,” Nat drawls, when Jason brings it up. “Weird how that’s not happening, huh?”

                “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jason says, raising his eyebrows as she unpacks what seems like a really unnecessary number of shoes.

                “It means friendly fire is still fire.” She hangs a dress in the closet and tucks a knife under the mattress. “I’m not interested in having to explain to Fury how we let you and Bruce Wayne kill each other.”

                “We wouldn’t actually _kill_ each other,” Jason says. Probably not. Bruce stayed at his place for two days, and they mostly just ignored each other.

                Natasha ignores him and drops a whole flock of paper birds on her night stand. Jason doesn’t ask. She’s been moving those birds around for years. He doesn’t get it, but it’s another one of the weird things she and Clint do for each other, so it’s not something he _needs_ to get, either.

                He wonders if she’s lonely. It’s hard to tell with her. Clint’s more obvious about it. Jason’s seen him legitimately pine for her before, and he’d be worried about it, because Clint’s too sweet a kid to get his heart broken and Natasha’s hurt enough people on purpose without having to square with hurting someone she loves unintentionally, but he’s seen Clint pine after Coulson, and Bucky, and even Tony, when he hasn’t seen them in a while.

                This whole thing, Jason thinks, is absolutely fucked. They’re a team. They need each other.

                Clint got to spend two days at home before he went off to Gotham, and he didn’t complain, because he only ever complains about cold coffee and bad snacks, but it’s bullshit. They should be together.

                Fuck Gotham. Fuck everyone who isn’t them.

                “You want to order pizza?” Natasha asks, turning back to face him. “There’s wine in the fridge. And I think there’s a fight on tonight. Supposed to be good.”

                “Yeah, okay,” Jason says, running a hand through his hair. “But we’re not reenacting that shit again. And, if we do, I get to be the winner this time.”

 

 

 

                Later that night, they’re sprawled on the couch together. Nat’s leaning into him, head on his shoulder and legs kicked over the arm of the couch. “You should call Tony’s mom again,” she says, while they’re watching a decently bloody UFC fight on the egregious TV Tony bought them. “She’s worried about you.”

                “I will,” Jason says. “Tomorrow.”

                “Okay,” Nat says. She’ll hold him to it, but she doesn’t give him shit for not doing it right now. That’s the trade-off with Nat. She doesn’t accept broken promises, but she doesn’t ask for unreasonable ones, either. She has never once set any of them up to fail. “You should talk to Pepper, too. She’s been calling me a lot.”

                “Yeah, alright.” Jason gets along well enough with Pepper Potts, but, like most people, she usually prefers to talk to Bucky. Or, apparently, Natasha. Which is interesting, and new. “You and Pepper gonna be a thing?”

                “Hm,” Natasha says, which generally means she’s considering it but hasn’t made a commitment either way. “She’s West Coast. If Barton starts something with Drake, it’d be easier if I picked up someone nearby.” She kicks her legs a little, thinking it over, and then takes another sip of her wine. “And someone needs to make amends with Oracle.”

                “Okay,” Jason says, rolling his eyes, “it’s really not necessary for you go around fucking people because I pissed them off. She’s a professional. She’ll just hurt me a lot next time I see her, and then we’ll be fine.”

                “Maybe,” Natasha says, noncommittal. “But my way’s faster. And more fun.”

                “And, besides,” Jason says, “if you and Oracle get together, Grayson’s gonna cry for days. You know how he feels about dangerous redheads.”

                Natasha shrugs one graceful shoulder. “I’ll invite him. He fills out that uniform pretty well. Seems flexible.”

                “I’m gonna puke,” Jason says. “Jesus, Nat, what’s the third rule of Gotham?”

                Nat smiles into her wine and then finishes it off, setting the glass on the coffee table in front of them, right next to the mostly-empty pizza box. She settles back against him, and he wishes Bucky were here, and Tony, but her weight is comforting. He thinks maybe she’s right about none of them being alone right now.

                “Hey,” she says, a few minutes later. “You wanna go beat up some creeps after this?”

                “Shit,” Jason says. It feels like a match strike, a long scrap and then a _pop_ , something hungry kicking awake in his belly. “ _Yes_. Let’s do that.”

                She reaches back, pats him once on the shoulder, and he doesn’t know how the hell he can feel so sharply divided, so neatly torn in two.

                He has to stop letting people get so close to him. Tony’s missing, and Bucky’s gone, and Nat’s taking him out to fight, which is the only thing he knows that’ll push thoughts of the two of them out of his head.

                Jason thinks that this is maybe the only team in the whole Goddamn world who could find Tony in time, if there’s any time left. And these are the only people would could hold Jason together long enough to make sure he’s still useful, when it’s time to do whatever needs to be done to get Tony back.

                He doesn’t want to think about what’ll happen, if they’re too late. What it’ll mean to this team. What he’ll do, when he loses the already precarious grip on his bullshit, scorched-earth grief.

                “Don’t let me kill anyone,” he says. It’ll upset Bruce. It’ll mean more work for Coulson. And if he starts, he doesn’t know how the hell he’ll ever stop.

                “I’ve got you,” she says, calm and serious. Sincere.

                She does. He knows that. He thinks maybe they’re talking about more than just whatever criminals they’ll encounter tonight, and he thinks she knows that, too.

                _For fuck’s sake_ , he thinks, a little hysterical in his own head, _how the hell did I end up with these people?_

                It had seemed like a blessing he didn’t deserve. For years, he’s had Bucky and Tony, and Coulson, Clint, and Nat, and Maria Stark and Pepper Potts and James Rhodes, and he feels like some idiot first-timer at Vegas, racking up debts without realizing the cost.

                “Actually,” he says, “let’s go right now.”

                Natasha tips her head back and considers him for a second. And then she nods, reassuring in how calm she is, how quickly she adapts. “Okay.” She climbs to her feet, holds a hand down, and pulls him up. “Leave your guns at home. I’ll bring mine.”

                Seven years ago, he wouldn’t have done that for anyone. It just drives home how fucked he is, that he doesn’t even think to argue.

 

 

 

                The days go by faster than they should, and slower than Jason’s patience and sanity can tolerate. Every hour ticks off in his head. Hydra took him, and Tony and Bucky got him back in four days. Bucky and Clint got grabbed once, in Somalia, and Jason and Nat reclaimed them before sundown the next day.

                Tony’s been missing for three weeks. Jason isn’t even losing his mind anymore. He’s not doing much of anything. He talks to Pepper and Tony’s mom on the phone every couple of days, and he talks to Clint or Bucky every morning, but the phone calls keep getting shorter, because they’re all running out of ways to say _He’ll be back soon_ that don’t sound like cruel, shitty lies.

Jason is – just barely – keeping himself from ripping into every single person who looks at him. But only because he doesn’t go out much at all. Stays home, stays locked up in the gym he and Bucky set up in their basement.

                “Don’t underestimate Tony,” Nat tells him. They eat breakfast together late every morning, and then she goes into SHIELD to train and try to placate Fury.

                “I’m not.” Jason isn’t underestimating him. He _knows_ Tony, knows how clever he is. Jason sees a problem, and he can almost always map his way to a solution, but Tony’s never met a problem without seeing six different ways to make it better. Jason knows the world would look at them and bet on him or Bucky being the most likely to make it out alive, but Tony’s resourceful, and he’s more adaptable than they are, more willing to play along with rules he doesn’t like if he means he still wins in the end.

                It’s been nearly a month, and they don’t have a body. If it were Jason, there’s a good chance he’d be in the sand by now, with a bullet hole through his skull.

                Jason knows Tony would never build for them. He knows Tony feels bad enough about building weapons for the right side. He wouldn’t ever build for someone he didn’t trust. But he worries, constantly, about what Tony’s doing to convince them that he’s trying.

                “Medical’s sending someone over,” Phil says, when he and Bruce stops by one afternoon. “To make sure you’re still in decent shape. You get an automatic fail if you punch her in the face.”

                “Hands to myself. Sure,” Jason says, shoving his hands in his pockets to illustrate his compliance.

                He squints at Bruce, who’s standing there with an overnight bag in hand, looking like he hasn’t slept in a week. “The hell is that for?” Jason asks, pointing at the bag.

                “If Medical passes you,” Coulson says, moving inside and clearing a path that allows Bruce Wayne to step neatly into Jason’s house, “then you two should spar. You haven’t been training with Nat, and Bucky’s not around, and no one else wants to work with you right now. So.”

                “No shit,” Jason says, sizing Bruce up. It’s been awhile since they fought, and things had been too fraught – as they usually were, with the two of them – for Jason to have any kind of fun with it at the time. “You gonna fight me, old man?”

                Bruce frowns, but Jason knows what it looks like, when Bruce is martyring himself for one of his million causes, and it doesn’t look like this. He wonders if Bruce has been missing his patrols, all those opportunities to bleed out his aggression in productive, helpful ways, like a good vigilante. He wonders if that’s why it looks like Bruce isn’t sleeping.

                “Still have a few things to teach you,” Bruce says, and Jason would miss it, the small, teasing smile, but he’s keyed up enough that he’s not sure he could miss a Goddamn thing, even if he tried.

                “Bullshit,” Jason says. “Alfred’s not around to stitch you up, you know?”

                That smile shifts, a little wider, a little more amused. “I’ll figure something out.”

                And it’s good, fighting Bruce. Jason doesn’t pull a single one of his punches, even after he catches on to the fact that Bruce is sure as hell pulling his. Bruce is a marathon fighter, easy enough to knock around but almost impossible to take down, and they’re in the basement for hours, spend all of the afternoon and half the evening just destroying each other.

                They stumble up after nine, and Nat and Phil roll their eyes at the pair of them, but they dole out dinner, and then painkillers, and then they herd the two of them along, Jason to bed and Bruce to Phil’s car. Jason falls into bed, already aching, and he sleeps until noon the next day. He wakes up in pain, and that distraction lasts a couple hours, but then he’s right back to where he was before, mind spinning like a centrifuge, never shutting up about all the terrible things Tony could be enduring.

                “He’s out here, somewhere,” Rhodey says, when he calls. “I know he is. I just can’t find him. And I can’t figure out how they knew where to find us. Those routes were classified. Our location—they never should’ve found us. They shouldn’t have found _him_.”

                “Someone sold the location,” Jason says. Rhodey knows that, and Jason knows that he knows it. But James Rhodes is fundamentally good, faithful and loyal and dutiful to his damn marrow, and it’s no surprise that he could objectively understand how easy it is to sell someone out without really being able to see his way through someone doing it to Tony.

                 Jason sighs at the long silence on the phone, and then he tries again. “Tony’s worth a lot of money.”

                “He’s not worth anything dead.” There’s another pause, and then Rhodey breathes out, hard. Jason wonders if maybe he and Nat should pack up, head over to Afghanistan, and check up on him. He wonders if that’s what Tony would’ve wanted them to do.

                 “I’ll keep looking,” Rhodey says. “Go out again, in the morning.”

                “Sure,” Jason says. “Drink some water,” he adds, a little at a loss. “Get some sleep.”

                Rhodes snorts, but he sounds more fond than offended. “Yeah,” he says. “You too.”

 

 

 

                Jason goes out, every night. Nat comes with him, although she spends most of it hanging back, letting Jason find his own fights. She doesn’t need it the way he does. She is, sometimes, willing to play bait for him, but she mostly keeps her distances, only making herself visible when Jason’s on the verge of getting out of hand.

                That’s why, when she appears at the end of the alley thirty-seven days after Tony goes missing, he looks at her without noticing, for several full seconds, that Bucky’s right beside her.

                “The fuck,” Jason says, dropping the would-be mugger to the ground. The man groans and rolls over, starts staining the concrete red, and Jason just stands there, blinking stupidly.

                “Jason,” Bucky says, dragging his eyes over the man’s injuries. He looks closed-off, like he doesn’t approve, or maybe cautious, like he’s unsure of his welcome. “You done here? We need to move.”

                “Oh, welcome back, you fucking asshole.” Jason’s louder than he needs to be. Over Bucky’s shoulder, he sees Natasha glancing up the street. “Nice of you to remember that we’re supposed to be in this together.”

                “Jason,” Bucky says, voice taut. “I’m sorry. I had to think.”

                Bucky hasn’t answered his calls for the last four days. And the week before that, he’d been useless over the phone, only answering direct questions and, even then, barely managing to string more than two syllables together.

                Jason shakes out his hands, rubs his bloody knuckles against the front of his shirt. He tries to corral some of that anger beating in his chest, but seeing Bucky’s Winter Soldier impression again isn’t doing much for his inner peace.

                “Think up anything good, jackass? You figure out where the fuck Tony is?”

                “No,” Bucky says, and then he gets his metal arm wrapped around Jason’s waist, starts hauling him up the alley like he’s someone’s runaway prom date. “But I’ve been thinking that we should talk to Stane.”

                “What,” Jason says and then thinks about it. It settles in his head with a click and a curse. “Oh, that motherfucker.”

                “Yeah,” Bucky says.

                “Coulson wants us to move on this now?” Jason asks, still a little thrown, trying to pull his brain back from the easy, meditative place where he just hits someone over and over, until he doesn’t want to anymore.

                “If we talk to Coulson,” Nat says, eyes focused and mouth flat, “that means talking to Bruce. And that means cops and supervised interrogation rooms.”

                Jason pauses at the end of the alley, looking between the two of them. _This_ , he realizes _, is not a mission._

                Bucky meets his eyes, and Jason’s never liked that Winter Soldier calm, but he knows that, sometimes, it has its uses.

                It shouldn’t feel like hope. It’s intel, or maybe just a hunch, and it is definitely criminal, and it might lead to nothing. They might be about to go after Tony’s best approximation of a father figure and accomplish absolutely nothing except deeply piss off Coulson and ruin one of the few relationships Tony actually seems to care about.

                But it’s been days, _weeks_ maybe, since Jason felt any kind of hope at all.

                “I fucking love you,” Jason says and shoves Bucky against a wall so he can kiss him. He gets his hands on Bucky’s hips and then under his shirt and finds his favorite knife, tucked into a sheath at Bucky’s back, already waiting for him. “Fuck. _Fuck_. I love you. Let’s go.”


	3. Chapter 3

                When they make it to the jet, Clint’s in the pilot’s seat, drinking coffee and looking only a little anxious. “Hey,” he says, with a wave, “you really oversold Gotham. That place is a treasure. I haven’t had so much fun since Budapest.”

                “Lose anything important?” Jason asks. “Your wallet? Your life? Your virginity?”

                “Ha.” Clint rolls his eyes, stifles a smile. “You wanna walk to California, Jay?”

                Jason grins at the back of Clint’s head. “C’mon, Barton. You know you missed me.”

                “Sure,” Clint says, because he and Jason don’t share many of the same hang-ups. Clint’s never considered affection a vulnerability he needed to hide, no matter how much the others tried to train him out of it. “Good to be back together like this. Too bad we’re all gonna get fired.”

                Natasha makes a soft noise of disagreement. “We won’t get fired. Coulson loves us. We’ll get reprimanded.”

                “Swell,” Clint says, frowning down at the panel in front of him.

                Like the rest of the team, Clint’s file features a series of complaints from some of SHEILD’s most impressive personnel. Unlike everyone else, not a single one of those complaints is from Coulson. Jason wonders if it’s going to hurt, getting that first one.

                “You can stay behind,” Jason says. “You probably won’t like the work we’re gonna do.”

                Clint grimaces. It’s not that Clint’s the sensitive one, because they all have their land mines and flinch points, but Clint gets upset, sometimes, about the harsher aspects of violence. He doesn’t always shake it quickly. It can linger, dog him after he gets home, pull him into a weird, monosyllabic headspace that can throw the whole team off. Jason and Bucky can’t drag him out of it, but Natasha can, sometimes, and Coulson can, every time.

                It’ll be a bitch of a thing, if they do this, and it fucks Clint up, and Coulson can’t or won’t help afterward.

                “Nah,” Clint says, starting takeoff procedures. “Team building exercise. Wouldn’t miss it.”

 

 

 

                They land at the SI airfield outside of Malibu and take the least eye-catching of the vehicles Tony’s left for them. It’s still a beautiful machine, and Jason almost doesn’t want to let Nat drive it, but he wants a center console between him and Bucky even less.

                Jason sprawls out in the backseat, knee pressed into Bucky’s thigh, and he watches the scenery fly by as Natasha speeds toward Stane’s house.

                “How’d you pick out Stane?” Jason asks, tipping his head Bucky’s direction. They hadn’t talked much on the flight; Bucky generally _doesn’t_ talk, right before a mission, but Jason goes the other way. He hits a point where he can’t contain all the energy starting to build under his skin.

                “Clint,” Bucky says, nodding toward Barton. “He said that Robin and Oracle have been digging through financial records and SI documents, and he heard something about Tony’s updated will, and new limitations on weapons development. So then I thought, aside from Maria, who would stand the lose the most from all of that?”

                Jason takes a breath and then lets it out. It’s bullshit. It’s absolute bullshit that someone wants to kill Tony Stark for _money_.

                It is also, he recognizes, not much to go on. It’s a theory, not evidence. He understands why no one’s moved on this yet. But it makes the particular appallingly simple kind of sense that these things usually do. It feels right. And he knows the rest of the team agrees, or they wouldn’t have told him about it. After the idea was in his head, there was no way Jason wasn’t going to go after it.

                Bucky, Nat, and Clint are all intuitive in their own ways, see different things in the same people. They don’t always agree on what they’re looking at, but, when they do, they’re almost never wrong.

                And if they’re wrong this time, well. Worse things have happened to better people. Worse things are probably happening to Tony right now.

                 “Shit,” Jason says, into the silence. “I thought _you_ did the leg work on this one, Buck. And it was Barton, the whole time.”

                Natasha laughs, light and amused. “Oh, I don’t think his legs did much of the work.”

                “Okay,” Clint says, sounding faintly embarrassed. “Really not relevant, Nat. Thanks.”

                “Look at you, Barton,” Jason says, approvingly. “We’ve been sending Nat on all the honeypot missions, and it should’ve been you, all along.”

                Clint rolls his eyes. “Thanks,” he says, voice flat. “It’s nice to finally be appreciated for my real skills.”

                There is an actual, honest-to-God _blush_ settling across Clint’s face. On better days, Jason would’ve laughed himself sick over this. It would’ve made Tony’s month, seeing Barton with a crush, and it’s that thought that sours the mood.

                Jason counterbalances, tries to bring everything back up. “Hey,” he says, mock-thoughtful, “maybe we don’t even take knives to this one. Maybe we just put Clint in a mesh shirt and send him in. He can pillow talk the location out of Stane.”

                “No,” Natasha says. Her tone is unusually sharp. When her eyes meet Jason’s in the rearview mirror, they’re narrowed and serious. Natasha doesn’t usually wear her protectiveness so close to the surface, but it’s always nice to see it.

                “Probably wouldn’t work,” Clint says, after an oddly speculative silence. “He’s never even looked at me. He’s usually busy trying to get Nat alone.”

                Jason blinks. “He what?” He shoots a look at Bucky, who seems equally startled, and then leans forward so he can stare at the side of Natasha’s unconcerned face. “He does _what_? Nat, why the hell is this the first time I’m hearing about this?”

                Natasha treats him to a spectacularly unimpressed sidelong glance. “What were you going to do about it, Jason? Fight him because he stares at me?”

                “Maybe,” Jason says. “Maybe if I’d fought him a few times before this, he wouldn’t have the balls to kidnap his fucking meal ticket.”

                “You can’t fight every guy who stares at me,” she tells him, because she has an obnoxiously practical soul. “You don’t have the time.”

                “Well,” Bucky says, sounding thoughtful, “we’ll have a lot of spare time after Coulson fires us.”

                Jason sighs as Clint tenses up all over again. He wonders about the deal Clint made with SHIELD when he was eighteen, the deal that bought his aim and kept him out of prison. His five years are up, but Jason doesn’t know the specifics of the deal. He doesn’t ask what’ll happen, if SHIELD decides that Clint’s reneged.

                No one’s going to drag Clint back to prison. Not with Nat watching over him. Hell, not with Barton watching over himself.

                But it’ll still be a cruel, bitter thing, if all the good Clint’s done is washed away over this. Cruel and bitter and unfair, but not unexpected. It was always going to be Clint’s loyalty that got him into trouble. It’s what fucked him over the first time, too. And Clint’s never learned to shake it, which Jason would probably find frustrating, if he didn’t have the same damn problem.

                “Don’t worry,” he says. “Once we get Tony back, he’ll hire Bucky, Nat, and me as private security.”

                “What about me?” Clint says, flicking his eyes up to meet Jason’s.

                “Figured you’d be busy,” Jason says. “Being Robin’s kept boy and all.”

                Clint blinks like he’s thinking about being offended, but then he smiles, a bit wistful and so damn smug it almost twists all the way into a smirk. “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.”

 

 

 

                There’s a moment, when Nat parks the car at the end of Stane’s stupidly long driveway and no one moves, where Jason realizes exactly what it means, pulling a mission without Coulson. They’re leaderless. It’ll be fine, because Stane and his security team aren’t much of a threat. But it feels weird, unbalanced.

                “Okay,” Jason says, checking his weapons one last time. “Remember, this isn’t SHIELD business. If anyone gets shot, we don’t get worker’s comp. So don’t get all fancy with your bullshit gymnastics routines this time.”

                Clint snorts and doesn’t look up from his arrows. “That’s the shittiest pep talk I ever heard.”

                “Who needs pep, Barton?” Jason asks, indignant. “We’ve got justice.”

                Clint pauses and then nods. “Alright,” he says, “I liked that one better.”

                They lope up to the house, headed for one of the side doors more out of habit than any genuine concern about security. It’s an easy job, but they’re not used to hunting civilians.

                Jason’s just about to reach for the door when Nightwing drops down from the balcony above. He lands soft and graceful, right in front of him. “This,” he says, eyes sweeping over the others before focusing on Jason, “is a bad idea. Go home, Jaybird.”

                “What the fuck?” Jason stares at him, incredulous and confused. “How the fuck did _you_ beat us here?”

                Blüdhaven’s even farther from Malibu than Gotham is, and the plane Tony built for them is faster than anything Bruce has right now. There’s no way Grayson could beat them here, unless Tim called him about thirty seconds after Bucky and Clint left Gotham.

                Nightwing hesitates, which is how Jason knows the answer is bad. Grayson’s many things, but he’s not ashamed of much of what he does, even when he should be. The fact that he’s looking at Jason now, with guilt all over his face, means he’s done something really, really shitty, and he knows it.

                Jason blinks, and the answer shifts together in his head, forms into something ugly. “You didn’t get here tonight. You’ve been here,” Jason says, slowly, feeling it out. He knows it’s true. He can tell by the way Nightwing winces. “You’ve been here for _how long_?”

                Nightwing takes a breath. He looks briefly to the others, but they’re all silent, waiting for his answer, letting Jason take the lead. Even Clint, who _likes_ Grayson, coordinates stupid little circus showoff routines with him whenever they’re in the same city, is staring at him like he’s on trial for treason.

                “Batman asked me to be here,” Nightwing says, finally. “To make sure you didn’t do anything you regretted.”

                It hits like a punch to the throat. Or, more appropriately, like a crowbar to the face.

                “Oh, son of a _bitch_ ,” Jason says, breathless with how fast the rage hits, how deep it runs. “That motherfucker. How long has he known? How long have you been here? Days? Weeks? The whole _fucking time_? Did he know the whole Goddamn time?”

                “Red,” Grayson says, almost pleading. His hands are up, palms empty, beseeching. “Take a breath for me, okay? Calm down.”

                “How _the fuck_ long has he known that Stane was behind this?” He’s yelling, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t give a fuck how loud he is. Let the whole damn world know that he’s out here, that he’s here for Stane. Let Stane call whatever security he’s got.

                “He’s trying to protect you,” Grayson says, like that makes any Goddamn sense. Like Bruce Wayne ever protects anything other than his own bullshit sense of moral righteousness. “Whatever you’re planning to do to him, Jason, that’s not who you are. That’s not what we do.”

                “It’s what I’m gonna do tonight,” Jason says, stepping toward him. “So get the fuck out of my way, Grayson, or I’ll do it to you first.”

                Grayson shakes his head, and his hands settle on his Escrima sticks, mouth pressed into a line. “You lose the moral high ground, Jay, if you do the same things to Stane that they’re doing to Tony.”

                Jason breathes in, and it’s like a lit match striking an ocean of gasoline. He breathes out, and he can’t believe he’s not spitting fire.

                “Oh, that was stupid,” Barton says, low and uneasy.

                “Jason,” Bucky says, and there’s a flash of movement to Jason’s right, like Bucky thinks he’s going to get a hand on him, hold him back.

                “Fuck you,” Jason says, to Grayson, to Bucky, to everyone in the whole world, and then he takes out the knife he was saving for Stane, and he goes right for Grayson.

                Behind him, he sees Bucky break for the door, and he knows they’re fucked; he can already hear the sirens, because someone – Grayson, or Bruce, or Stane, or maybe even Coulson – called the fucking _police_. He knows they don’t have much time, but he can keep Grayson busy, buy Bucky whatever time there is.

 

 

 

                Afterward, when most of them have dodged the cops and Coulson and Bruce have showed up to collect them, Clint stitches up him and Grayson in some shitty hotel, while Bruce stares at them, arms crossed, blocking the door. Coulson’s pacing in front of the window, thumb in one ear, cellphone pressed to the other, negotiating prisoner transport from MPD to SHIELD, because the cops grabbed Bucky when they arrested Stane.

                “Thanks for your help back there,” Jason says to Nat, just to be shitty. When the fight turned truly nasty, she put herself in the middle of it, and he and Grayson had broken off, attention splintered just enough to realize that there were half a dozen police vehicles swarming up the driveway.

                She gives him a long stare, and it’s grim enough that he starts to regret what he said. “We still need to work on your temper.”

                “Or,” Jason says, “you could help me kill all the people who are pissing me off. Which is what I would do for you, if you asked.”

                “Are we fired?” Clint asks, when Coulson hangs up. “Are we gonna get arrested? Coulson, what’s going on?”

                “Everybody, please be quiet,” Coulson says, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose and then fanning out to press hard into the skin under his eyes. “I need all of you to be quiet for the next fifteen seconds.”

                Jason opens his mouth to invite Coulson to go fuck himself and then hisses in sharp over his teeth when Clint gets uncharacteristically brusque with his needlework. “ _Fuck_ , Barton,” Jason says, staring at him. “What was that for?”

                “Give him fifteen seconds,” Clint says, in a hissing whisper. “For fuck’s sake, Jason, some of us don’t have rich benefactors.”

                Jason glares at him, still temperamental from the aftershocks of all that rage. “Yeah, well, mine might be dead, and you’re in Robin’s tights now, so it actually looks like you’re one up on me, shithead.”

                “Okay,” Coulson says, dropping his hand to his side and turning to stare at the three of them, clustered together on one of the double beds, because there’s safety in numbers. “What the hell were you thinking?”

                “That’s pretty obvious,” Natasha says, when neither he nor Clint rush to speak. “Barton noticed what Robin and Oracle were digging into and reported it to Barnes, who figured out who’d want to get rid of Tony and have the clearance to know his location. And then Barnes gathered us up, and we came here.”

                “You came here,” Coulson repeats, “to do what?”

                Jason’s not ashamed of what he’d been planning to do. He _isn’t_. But that doesn’t mean he wants to say it out loud, with Bruce and Coulson and Dick fucking Grayson, staring right at him.

                But he says it anyway. They all know who he is. “Intel,” he says, with a sharp, expressive hand gesture, like peeling a carrot or slicing off skin. “We had some questions for him.”

                “So your plan,” Coulson says, “was to come here, unauthorized, without orders, and torture an American citizen in his own home? An American citizen, with really, _really_ expensive lawyers?”

                “Well,” Jason says, with a shrug, “yeah.”

                “And you decided to bring the entire team,” Coulson continues, looking at all three of them in turn, “except me? I get no word at all. So, suddenly, I hear from Hill that Clint and Bucky can’t be located and then I try to call in Natasha and Jason, only to come to the realization that my _entire team_ is missing.”

                “Shit,” Jason says. He hadn’t thought about what it would be like for Coulson, to look up and realize that everyone was gone. “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds kinda--”

                “Terrifying?” Coulson supplies.

                “Shitty,” Jason hedges.

                “Do I get an explanation?” Coulson asks, arms crossing over his chest. “Because I’m going to have to do a lot of work to keep you four, so I’d like to know if I should bother. Is there something about me you’ve decided to object to? Would you prefer another handler? If you can’t trust me--”

                “No, fuck that,” Jason says, straightening up. “That’s not it. We trust you. Jesus, Coulson, of course we trust--”

                “Nat said we shouldn’t,” Clint says, breaking in. He sounds halfway to panic. “She said telling you would be telling Batman, and Batman wouldn’t let us near him.”

                Coulson goes unusually still. For a long moment, he just stares at Clint and then he slowly moves his eyes to Natasha, who meets his gaze but fidgets, just a little, shifting to lean more weight into Jason’s uninjured side.

                “That,” Coulson says, quietly, “was a bad call.”

                Out of the corner of his eyes, Jason sees Nat lift her chin. “Was it wrong?”

                Coulson blinks and then sighs, running a hand through his hair and then cupping the back of his neck while he stares down at the floor. Jason feels shitty. He feels, for the first time, like a Goddamn traitor, who spat in the face of someone who’s only ever helped him, and he swallows back all that anger still humming in his veins, because there aren’t any safe targets here, and he doesn’t have any bridges left that he can afford to burn.

                “We should’ve told you,” Jason says.

                “Coulson,” Clint says, sounding _sad_ , and twisted up, all kinds of sorry for what Jason and Bucky dragged him into. “This is my fault. I should’ve told you instead of Bucky. I wasn’t thinking--”

                “It’s fine,” Coulson says. It’s like a flipped switch, the way he comes back, tone and body language shifting to reassure Barton, and Jason wouldn’t have believed there was any hurt in him, except he’d just seen it all over his face. And, fuck, Jason hadn’t thought he could feel _worse_ , but here he is anyway. “I understand what happened.”

                “It was a bad call,” Natasha says, quiet and careful. She’s staring right at Coulson. “I won’t make it again.”

                “We’re not really gonna get a new handler, are we?” Clint’s working on his tone; he’s bullied it closer to flat and controlled, but Jason can already tell exactly how things are going to go, if any of them gets reassigned. “I don’t want to work for anyone else.”

                “If Fury looks at this and decides I can’t control you…” Coulson trails off with a grimace.

                “If he thinks _you_ can’t control us,” Natasha says, “wait til he sees what we do to whoever he passes us off to.”

                “Yeah, that’s the spirit,” Coulson says. “Deliberate, premeditated sabotage. _That’s_ how you show Fury you’re reliable agents. Can you at least wait until _after_ I spring Barnes from jail, or are the three of you suddenly in a hurry to complete your mission objectives?”

                “I can cover bail,” Bruce says, suddenly interrupting. “If that’s easier.”

                “You can get fucked,” Jason says, turning on him immediately. “You can get fucked all the way back to Gotham.”

                “Jason,” Grayson says, sounding tired, “could you just--”

                “And _you_ ,” Jason says, “can get fucked all the way back to whatever bullshit city you’re failing to protect right now.”

                “Woah.” Clint sounds vaguely taken aback. “Jay, come on. It’s not like this is a surprise. This is who they’ve always been. Why are you taking this so personally?”

                Jason throws his hands up and stands, leaves Nat and Clint on the bed. “Because it _is_ personal. They did this shit to stop _me_ , personally, from figuring out where they fuck Stane stashed Tony. This is fucking personal. It’s about Batman’s bullshit crusade to keep me in line.”

                “There’s no _evidence,_ Jason. All you have is a theory,” Bruce says. “I’m trying to keep you from doing something you’ll regret.”

                “ _No_ ,” Jason yells back. “Fuck you. You’re trying to keep me from doing something _you’ll_ regret. Because you don’t want to deal with it. Because you’re fucking _fine_ with blood spilling, so long as it’s not on your Goddamn hands. But that’s Tony’s blood, and I’d burn down a fucking orphanage to get him back, so just fuck off back to Gotham, and stop getting people killed.”

                “Jason.” Coulson steps away from the wall, and Jason almost takes a swing at him when Coulson reaches out, puts a hand on Jason’s shoulder, but the fight drains out of him at the look on Coulson’s face. “We’re going to get him back,” Coulson says. “We don’t have to get him back like this.”

                “How long did you know?” Jason says, locking his jaw tight, trying to hold himself steady long enough to get an answer. “Did you know the whole time, too?”

                Coulson’s eyes go to Bruce, and there’s a tense, drawn-out moment where they’re just staring at each other, communicating something that Jason can’t quite parse. And then Coulson looks back at him, and there’s regret in his eyes, and sympathy, but not an ounce of guilt.

                “I found out a few hours ago,” he says, “when I asked Batman to help me find my team.”

                “Fuck,” Jason says, spitting it out past clenched teeth. He feels precarious suddenly, like he’s teetering at the edge of a cliff with no idea how steep the drop is. “We should’ve told you.”

                “You should have,” Coulson agrees. “But I should’ve been keeping a closer eye on you. I should’ve known this was going to happen. I _know_ you, Jason. I remember what happened, when Robin went missing. As soon as you had any kind of theory, you were going to act on it.”

                Jason wavers. He remembers going for Drake, thinking the whole time that he was going to find another, smaller body wrecked by Batman’s half-assed crusade against the Joker, another kid who died because Batman’s all hunt and no kill, always has been. He remembers leaving the mission, dropping everything, to go get him. And he doesn’t even fucking _like_ Tim Drake.

                He thinks about what he would’ve done, if he’d gotten to Stane first. He’s hurt people in hundreds of different ways, but he’s never done even half of what he’d been considering, on the flight over. He doesn’t think there’s much left of his soul to shred, but he’d give up all of it, in a heartbeat, if he thought it would bring Tony back.

                He clears his throat, shifts his weight. He catches himself on the very edge of leaning into Coulson, like he’s some lost child, looking for comfort, and Coulson doesn’t move, but his hand tightens around Jason’s shoulder. He grips so hard it almost hurts, and it grounds him, lets Jason slow the sick-spinning of his mind.

                “It doesn’t have to be that bad,” Jason says, when he feels like he can speak. “He’s a _civilian_ , Phil. He probably hasn’t been hit since the last time he played Red Rover in third grade. Wouldn’t even get that messy. And it’s _Tony_. C’mon.” He looks up at him, eyes wide. “It’s _Tony_.”

                Coulson stares at him for three, four, five heartbeats, and then he drops his hand from Jason’s shoulder and looks over at Bruce.

                “No,” Bruce says, straightening up. “We were close, before this. The people who have him don’t know Stane’s been arrested yet. Give me a week. I’ll have his location in a week.”

                “A _week_ ,” Jason says. “Coulson, you know what people like that can do to someone in a week. For fuck’s sake, Phil, they’ve had him for thirty-seven days. I want _Tony_ back, not pieces of him.”

                Coulson looks between the two of them. “Forty-eight hours,” he says, and then grabs tight to Jason’s shirt to keep him from going for Bruce, or the door. When he looks over at him, Coulson’s eyes are apologetic, but his voice is steady. “In forty-eight hours, if you can’t tell me where Tony is, I’m letting Natasha and Jason interrogate Stane. On SHIELD property.”

                 “Twelve hours,” Jason counters. “Phil, _come on_. I could have his location in twenty minutes. I won’t even take a knife. I won’t break anything serious. Just let me in there. _Please_.”

                “Twenty-four,” Bruce says. “Jason.” He looks right at him. Jason can’t read what’s on his face, but he’s never been able to read Bruce anyway, not really. “Give me one day.”

                Jason swallows. He thinks about Tony, who had to see a therapist for six months after he shot one Hydra agent in Gotham. Tony, who designs weapons that can murder a hundred people at a time but can’t accidentally hit a squirrel with his car without hurling himself into a fit of self-recrimination.

                This shitty thing is he _knows_. Of course he knows. He knows that Tony wouldn’t want this. Tony wouldn’t want him and Nat in a room with Stane, with Coulson behind glass and the cameras off, using knives and fists to dig for secrets.

                If, after all this, they uncover Tony alive, Jason’s going to have to look him in the eyes and tell him either he did everything he could to get him back, or he didn’t. And he knows which of those sins Tony would forgive.

                “Fine,” he says, turning his back on Bruce. “You’ve got twenty-four hours. Find out where he is, or we will.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few updates! I changed the total number of chapters from 6 to "?" because I thought I knew what the hell I was doing here, but, turns out, I don't. So there will be more chapters than anticipated. That's the good news. 
> 
> The bad news is that I'm going to miss next week's update, because I'm going on an adventure. There is a slight chance that I'll manage to get the next chapter done early, in which case I'll post it on Friday. But don't get your hopes up too high. 
> 
> And, finally, I'm working on Tony's POV for some of this. I'm not sure if I'll post that as the next chapter or eventually post it as a companion fic later. I may also post part/all of it on tumblr. So, you know, follow me on [tumblr](https://thepartyresponsible.tumblr.com/) for updates, or just keep checking this fic, because I'll post the eventual link in the chapter notes.

                It’s almost dawn by the time Coulson brings Bucky back. Jason’s waiting up, stationed in the hotel lobby, drinking terrible coffee that he stole from the employee break room, while Clint and Natasha nap on the couch next to him. Bucky looks at him from across the room, and Jason can read on his face that Bucky didn’t manage to get anything out of Stane before the cops broke up the party.

                The busted knuckles on Bucky’s hand make him feel a little bit better, though.

                “Get some sleep,” Coulson says, when he stops in front of them. Clint stirs at his voice, and Nat’s eyes blink open, focusing immediately in his direction. “All four of you,” he says. “Sleep it off. Grab something from the breakfast buffet on the way, if you can do it without breaking any more laws.”

                “Still pissed, huh?” Not that Jason blames him. He knows what disloyalty feels like. He just didn’t know it from this side of things, didn’t realize how easy it was, how quickly it could happen.

                “I don’t have the energy for that,” Coulson says. He’s barely disheveled; Jason’s definitely seen him worse. But Coulson’s not quite making eye-contact with any of them, and that’s weird. Disquieting. “Be back down here at noon. I’ll talk things over with Fury, figure out what he wants to do about this.”

                Jason nods. “Where’s Stane?”

                Coulson sighs and takes his phone out of his pocket. “He’s in police custody. Turns out, he’s committed a series of felonies, primarily financial in nature. If I can talk Fury into it, we’ll have him moved into SHIELD custody later today. Now go.” He gestures over his shoulder, up toward their rooms. “Sleep.”

                “You gonna sleep?” Clint asks, as he stands up. He’s steady on his feet, but a little dazed around the eyes. He and Nat always seem sleep heavier when they sleep near each other.

                “If I get tired,” Coulson says, eyes on his phone, “I’ll get a room. Go.”

                _I’ll get a room_ , Jason thinks.

                They’ve got two doubles with an adjoining door between them, and, on the face of it, it makes sense: four beds for four people. But there’ll be an empty bed in both rooms, and the whole team knows it.

                Taking the extra bed in Jason and Bucky’s room might invite a bit of scandal, but the extra in Nat and Clint’s would be safe enough. And Jason remembers a few times in the past, when they’d all clustered up in one room, and Coulson had slept on chairs, or tiny couches, or, once, after being forcefed a particularly nasty drug cocktail in Nigeria, curled up between Clint and Nat.

                It’s not necessarily deliberate, the way he’s distancing himself from them, but the look Nat throws Jason – and the look on Clint’s face – suggests he’s not the only one who feels the sting of it.

                “Yeah, alright,” Jason says, hooking one arm around Bucky’s shoulders and grabbing Clint’s elbow with his free hand. “Let’s go, kids. Nap time.”

 

 

 

                Jason wakes up warm, face pressed to Bucky’s neck. He can feel Bucky’s pulse beating against the soft, sensitive skin of his lips. He thinks about biting, just a little, just enough to wake Bucky up, and then he hears a knock at the door between the adjoining rooms.

                He wonders if that’s what woke him up. He thinks maybe he sleeps a little heavy too, when he sleeps with the right people.

                “Yeah,” Bucky calls out, voice scratchy with sleep. “We’re awake.” The door creaks open, and Jason doesn’t move, trusts Bucky to let him know if there’s some kind of threat he needs to deal with.

                “Hey,” Clint says, sounding sleepy and subdued, like he rolled right out of bed and stumbled this way over without bothering to wake up properly.

                Jason should sit up, check the clock. Try to come up with some sort of plan for how he’s going to fill the hours between now and noon, when Coulson will hopefully give him some kind of direction.  

                “It’s a quarter til noon,” Clint says. “You guys should probably get up.”

                “Like fuck it is.” Jason shoves himself up, hand to Bucky’s chest, and stares blankly at the glowing red alarm clock. “How the fuck?”

                “Easy on those stitches,” Bucky says, hands going to cover the worst of the cuts Jason got last night, like he thinks he can hold Jason’s skin together just by willing it hard enough. “They’re fresh.”

                “It’s almost noon, Buck,” Jason says, pulling away from him and shoving the sheets back. “They were fresh ten hours ago.”

                “God— _c’mon_ ,” Clint says, throwing his hands in front of his face and turning back toward his room. “ _Pants_ , Jason. We discussed this. Couslon had a whole PowerPoint. Remember?”

                “Oh, _forgive me_ , princess,” Jason says, reaching for his clothes on the floor. “I figured, after all those weeks in Gotham, we wouldn’t have to worry about your virgin eyes anymore.”

                Clint flips him off with one hand and grabs the door with the other, pulling it shut behind him as he flees back to the safety of his own room.

                Bucky’s watching Jason from the bed, the wrong kind of thoughtful. Sometimes, after a fight, he can’t keep his hands to himself. And other times, he looks at every single one of Jason’s injuries like it’s some kind of very personal tragedy.

                Jason hasn’t cracked the pattern yet, although he probably could, if he could talk it through with Tony.

                “Hey,” Jason says, as he buttons up his jeans, “get dressed. Let’s see if anyone knows where our boyfriend is yet.”

 

 

 

                They take the stairs together, because it’s just two flights and Bucky doesn’t always like enclosed spaces, and they empty out into the lobby with a direct line of sight into the hotel’s cafe, where Coulson and Bruce Wayne are sitting across from each other, having what appears to be an immensely serious discussion.

                Jason does his best not to audibly grind his teeth together. “Christ, I knew we should’ve changed hotels.”

                “Listen,” Natasha says, turning to face them. “I’ve been talking to Pepper. She brought Wayne into the Malibu SI headquarters this morning, gave him full access to the facility. And then she took him to Tony’s house.”

                “Are you trying to tell me that there were files he couldn’t access remotely?” Jason, of all people, knows exactly how smart Tony is, but that’s still hard to believe. “This is Batman. This is Oracle _and_ Robin. And _Batman_.”

                “Yeah,” Natasha says, arms crossed over her chest. “And guess where he stores all the files on your weapons upgrades? On Bucky’s upgrades? We’ve been at odds with the Bats before.” She gives him a quick, searching look. “You think Tony doesn’t protect your secrets?”

                Honestly, Jason hadn’t thought about it. Bruce knows so many of his secrets that Jason long ago accepted the idea that he knows all of them. He doesn’t care if Bruce knows the status of his weapons. It would be different for Tony, though. Tony would do the best he could. Tony always does.

                “Did they find something?” Bucky asks.

                “I don’t know.” Natasha glances over her shoulder. Bruce is headed toward an exit on the opposite side of the lobby, and Coulson is staring right at them, looking faintly exasperated. “Alright,” she says, “let’s go.”

                “Were you _stalling_ us?” Jason demands, indignant as all hell. “Nat, I can behave in public, for fuck’s sake.”

                “Sure,” Natasha agrees. “I’ve got all kinds of evidence that supports that theory.”

                “Reams of evidence,” Clint says. “Your whole SHIELD file’s full of it.”

                “Do I still _have_ a SHIELD file?” Jason asks, and then, louder, as he settles into the chair Bruce recently vacated and hooks another chair over for Bucky, “Hey, Phil, do I still have a SHIELD file?”

                “Yes,” Phil says, rubbing at his face. “It says ‘very nearly more trouble than he’s worth’ on the front.”

                Jason blinks. “Sorry,” he says, “was that supposed to be an insult? C’mon, Phil. You’ve got more venom in you than that.”

                Coulson considers him. “You’re only saying that because you’ve never had anything close to an accurate approximation of your worth,” he says, in that same even tone.

                “Okay,” Jason relents. “That one was kinda mean. Good for you.”

                “It’s almost as if,” Coulson continues, as he tips the table up and reaches underneath, “someone taught you that.”

                He drops a small device on the table between them and then lets the table settle on all four legs again. The whole group stares down at the bug Bruce left behind.

                “God, he’s an asshole.” Jason grabs Bruce’s abandoned coffee, drinks the whole thing strained through his teeth, just to make sure there’s not another one hidden at the bottom. “Bruce,” he says, to the innocuous circle of chip and mic, “you’re an _asshole_.”

                Coulson picks the bug off the table, snaps it neatly in half, then into quarters, and then he drops the pieces into his glass of water. “There’s a car outside,” he says. “We’re going to Afghanistan.”

                “Right now?” Jason asks. “Did he find something? Did he find Tony?”

                Coulson shakes his head and stands up. He shrugs his way into his suit jacket and grabs his phone off the table. “He says he’s working on it.”

                Technically, Bruce still has half a day, but Jason’s fine with any timeline Phil gives him. If Phil wants to move on this now, he’s more than happy to follow.

                “Stane’s in SHIELD custody,” Coulson says. “His transport leaves an hour or so after ours. If Batman misses the deadline, Fury’s cleared us to question him.”

                “Question?” Bucky says, monotone. Jason looks at him, and the Winter Soldier’s looking back. Usually, that’s a bad sign, but Jason wouldn’t mind his company on this particular mission.

                “Yes,” Phil says, with a nod. “That’s what we’ll be calling it, in the reports.”

                This is the sort of thing Jason should be careful with. He can tell, this time. He missed it, when Natasha showed up to collect him and told him they needed to leave Phil out of it. But he can feel the team stretching against its limits, feel the ties that hold them together creaking against the strain.

                Phil’s bustling, fixing buttons, tugging sleeves, slipping his phone into his pocket, and he’s not looking at any of them. Clint’s staring at the side of Phil’s face, earnest and worried, like a dog locked on the wrong side of a door. Nat’s nothing, and Bucky’s nothing too, both of them falling simultaneously into _ready to comply_.

                There’s a right answer here somewhere, but Jason’s never been the right answer type. God knows he never had any luck finding his way to bloodless solutions.

                “Great,” he says, instead of whatever the right thing would’ve been. “Let’s go.”

 

 

 

                Colonel Rhodes meets them as soon as they’re off the plane. Clint gets the close, casual, back-slapping hug that brothers probably share, when they actually get along, and Nat gets a nod and a smile, and Bucky and Jason get handshakes and strong, steady grips that settle briefly on their shoulders. Coulson doesn’t get anything, because he’s on the phone as soon as he’s off the jet, head ducked and mouth turned down into a focused frown.

                “Hey,” Rhodes says, squinting at all of them in turn. “How’ve you been holding up?”

                “Like shit, Rhodes,” Jason says. Honesty can be messy, but this whole damn situation is so messy that Jason can’t imagine it’ll make anything worse.

                “How about you?” Natasha asks, stepping up next to Jason and peering up at Rhodes curiously.

                “Don’t start with me, Romanoff,” Rhodes says, passing a hand in front of his face like that will somehow ward off Natasha’s creepily accurate ability to analyze other people’s mental state. “He’s been my best friend since freshman year. I’m fucked up about it, but I’m functional.”

                “I hate deserts,” Clint says, looking around the base.

                “No trees to nest in,” Natasha offers, when Rhodes turns a questioning look her direction. “Don’t worry, Barton. I’m sure Colonel Rhodes will let you hunt from a helicopter.”

                “If it brings Tony back,” Rhodes says, with a shrug, “you can shoot from whatever the hell you want to.”

                Clint nods, but he doesn’t seem especially comforted. He shoots a forlorn glance at Coulson’s back, and Jason looks away quickly, because there’s not a damn thing he can do about that.

                Losing Tony slipped them all out of orbit, and they’re starting to crash into each other, a never-ending shitshow of cascading failures. It won’t help to patch any of it until the main problem is addressed. If they don’t get Tony back, everything’s going to keep going like this, until the whole thing finally crashes off its track.

                “Please tell me you’re here for a reason,” Rhodes says, eyes locked on Jason. “Please tell me you’ve got something.”

                “We’ll have something,” Jason promises. It soothes some of the worry on Rhodes’ face, but, beside him, Jason can feel Bucky and Natasha tensing up. _Cascading failures_ , he thinks. He’s stuck in a flowchart where every single arrow leads to _you’re fucked_. “By the end of the day,” he says, “we’ll have it.”

                “Okay,” Rhodes says. He breathes out and smiles, uneven and uncertain, eyes flicking between them, a question lighting in his eyes that he knows better than to ask. “Okay,” he says, again, and then gestures over his shoulder. “Let’s get you guys settled in.”

 

 

 

                Bruce has two hours left, and Jason’s losing his damn mind all over again. He can’t tell if the tightness in his stomach is anxiety or anticipation. He’s prepped for a mission, sweating into body armor he knows he should take off, and Natasha is obsessively sharpening her knives. Bucky and Clint are showing off for some military snipers, and Jason hopes they’ll stay gone. When he does this, he doesn’t want them around to see it.

                This is the kind of secret he and Natasha can share, without it getting its teeth into them afterward, but only if it stays a secret. Only if Bucky and Clint don’t have to look at it, or hear about it, or know it’s happening until it’s over.

                It feels like a betrayal, when Coulson shows up with Clint, Bucky, and Rhodes behind him. And Jason supposes he’s earned that, can’t blame Coulson for hitting back, but it stings anyway, that fresh shock of pain that lands right before the deeper ache hooks in, makes itself at home.

                “We have a location,” Phil says. It’s a lighting strike, fills Jason’s whole head up with so much aftershock that he almost can’t parse what he says next. “We’re leaving in twenty minutes. Three teams. Jason, you’re with Bucky. Natasha, you’re with Rhodes. Let’s go.”

                “You have him?” Jason says, standing up so fast he damn near knocks the whole table over. “You know where he is? He’s alive? Is he alright? What--”

                “We have a location,” Coulson repeats. “And a video from three days after he was captured.”

                “So he could be dead,” Jason says. “Three days? Phil, it’s been five weeks since then. They could’ve moved him. What the fuck---”

                “And,” Coulson says, cutting him off, “we have shipments, being brought to the location.”

                “Shipments,” Natasha says, slowly. Jason can almost track her brain making the leaps, because his is right there with her. But the endpoint, the answer on the other side of the equation, doesn’t make any damn sense.

                Jason shakes his head. “Tony’s not building for them.” He isn’t. He wouldn’t.

                Jason doesn’t want to think about the sorts of things they’d have to do, to convince Tony to build weapons for them. He’s in something of a precarious state already, and it won’t do anyone any good, if he starts comparing that list to the things he’d planned to try on Stane.

                Coulson’s staring at him. Jason’s caught too far in his own head to read what’s on Coulson’s face but he thinks it looks a little like sympathy. “Well,” Coulson says, quietly, “he’s definitely building something.”

 

 

 

                They leave in helicopters, accompanied by a group of men Rhodes introduces as the 58th. “PJs,” Rhodes elaborates, when Jason just blinks at him.

                “Pararescue,” Bucky says, when Jason turns to him expectantly. “They’ll be useful.”

                “Sure,” Jason says, taking a truly half-assed stab at magnanimous. He catalogs the way Coulson is collectively dismissed and the shared _you see this shit?_ looks that Clint gets for the bow strapped to his back. “Useful,” Jason adds, as he tracks the way one of the men grins at Natasha, doesn’t even flinch at the edged, wolfish grin she gives back.

                “Don’t worry.” Rhodes, who caught the same exchange, sounds torn between amused and concerned. “If she knifes any of them, one of the others should be able to patch it up. Nice thing about PJs is that they clean up their own messes.”

                “That’s admirable.” Honestly, Jason doesn’t care if Rhodes sends him out with a helicopter full of drunk kindergartens armed with Uzis, piloted by their blind P.E. teacher. He doesn’t care who else is there, but he needs to get there _now_. “Make sure they stay out of my way.”

                Rhodes looks over at him, eyebrows arched. “Don’t get any more airmen killed. Not unless you have to.”

                If he were a better person, Jason probably would’ve clocked the human cost of this search before now. He would’ve thought about what it took for Rhodes to send people out, day after day, searching for someone who might already be dead, putting people in harm’s way for the _chance_ of recovering a lost civilian.

                But the truth is, he hasn’t thought about it. And even now, he’s not sure that he cares. He’s at his threshold, full up on caring about Tony. He doesn’t give a damn about anyone who isn’t Tony, or his team. He doesn’t care how many sad letters Rhodes has to write, how many strained phone calls or horrible visits to brokenhearted widows he has to make.

                “We’ll look after them,” Bucky says. He even sounds like he means it. Jason’s not sure why he resents it, but, if Bucky could’ve shaken himself loose from the robotic grip of the Winter Soldier this whole Goddamn time, it would’ve been nice if he’d bothered to do it for Jason every now and then.

                “Be real easy to do that,” Jason says, as he starts toward the copter, “if they stay the fuck behind me.”

 

 

 

                They have staggered arrival times and separate destinations, and Jason knows that it makes sense to send the sniper and the spy in first, have them scout the area from a distance, come up with an assessment before he and Bucky touch down, but it rankles, the idea that the whole team will get there before him.

                It’s a blessing, though, some unexpectedly benevolent quirk of fate, like destiny’s handing out consolation prizes in some doomed attempt to break even. Because it’s Clint’s team that reports the explosion, and Natasha’s that calls in the first sighting of some flying object, but it’s Jason and Bucky that get to watch Tony, in the metal suit they know immediately belongs to him, falling right out of the sky.

                Like Icarus. Like a fucking rock.

                Jason damn near throws himself out of the helicopter, for no fucking reason. Like he thinks, somehow, he can catch a suit that clearly weighs enough to crush half the bones in his body.

                And then Wonder Woman descends, wraps one arm around the metal suit, and she checks the velocity but can’t change the trajectory, not with the time she has left. They slam into the sand, but not hard enough to be dangerous. If Tony was alive when that suit was falling, he’ll still be alive, on the ground, waiting for them.

                Bucky leaps from the side before it’s safe. He rolls into it, takes a hit that’ll mark him up, and then he climbs to his feet, a quarter mile from the crash site, and starts running.

                “Shit,” one of the pararescuemen says. “Who are you guys?”

                Jason’s shaking, but, when he wraps his hand around his gun, he goes still again. “Get me down there,” he says. “Right the fuck now.”

                His feet hit sand less than a minute later. Bucky and Wonder Woman are peeling metal away, throwing it into a growing pile, and Jason catches sight of Tony’s face, still and unresponsive, and his heart stops in his chest and then then starts up again, lodged in his throat, when he sees the rise and fall of Tony’s breath.

                Jason breaks into a run, hits his knees in a skid that slams him right into Wonder Woman, and then he shoulders her out of the way. Doesn’t give a damn if she _is_ some kind of goddess. Doesn’t care who she is at all. He doesn’t want her anywhere near Tony. Not right now.

                He feels, for a second, the full, immovable weight of her strength, but then she gives way, draws back, lets him in. Bucky’s right beside him, shoulder pressing into his, and one of the PJs shows up on Tony’s other side, starts looking him over with an efficiency that soothes some of the anxiety beating in Jason’s throat.

                After a long second of stillness, Tony’s eyes slide open, and he gasps. The cracked skin around his mouth breaks open, and then there’s fresh blood coating his teeth. There’s more blood on his arms, heaviest on his right shoulder, where something that looks like a bullet wound is bleeding freely.

                And there is something in Tony’s chest. It’s metal, and it’s glowing, and it’s set deeper than it should be. The PJ’s hands stall out over it, hovering, like he’s not sure it’s safe to touch.

                Wonder Woman stands, half a yard away, looking down at Tony. “Will he be alright?”

                “He’s got a fucking _glowing blue machine_ set in his fucking _chest_.” Jason’s yelling at Wonder Woman. Even the man who routinely jumps out of planes is starting to look at him like he’s insane. “He’s ship-fucking-shape, thanks for asking.”

                “I’m dead, right?” Tony sounds delirious. He’s got his head tipped back into Bucky’s hands, and he’s smiling. “I’m dead. There’s an angel over there.”

                “She’s a fucking Justice League shithead, not a Goddamn angel,” Jason snarls. “Ignore her,” he adds, and then fails to take his own advice.

                He looks at her, finally, and he would shoot at her, he _would_ , just for staring at him that way, all wide-eyed and worried and kind, but he doesn’t need her ricocheting the bullet into any of Rhodey’s nice Air Force boys.

                “Missed you,” Tony says, looking at Jason. “Missed your way with words.”

                “What’s this?” Bucky says, hand very lightly touching the red, raised skin next to the device. “Tony, what did they do to you?”

                “Is it a bomb?” Jason says. “Is it a fucking---”

                “I did it,” Tony says. “I built it. It’s okay. Don’t touch it.”

                Bucky pulls his hand away, and Jason rocks back on his heels, takes a deep breath. He’d thought, when he found Tony, that he would feel better. He doesn’t. He feels like he’s going to throw up.

                He’d expected blood. He hadn’t expected this.

                He doesn’t know how the hell he’s going to fix this. He doesn’t know how he’s going to fix any of this.

                There is a hole in Tony’s chest, and he’d filled it with something metal.

                Jason looks around, at all the debris scattered over the sand, the metal plates with dings and scrapes and bullet holes. He looks at the crater Tony made, when he dropped to the ground. He doesn’t know what any of it means, what the hell it represents. Tony, in a metal suit, with blood on his face and something set so deep into his chest that it must be pressing damn near _into_ his heart.

                “What the fuck,” Jason says, looking down at Tony. He thinks about shipments, and days stretching into weeks, and Tony, without them. “What _is_ this shit, Stark? What the hell were you doing?”

                Tony blinks and looks away. He stares over Jason’s shoulder, toward Wonder Woman or maybe the mountains behind her, and he licks the blood off his cracked lips. “I just,” he says. “I ran out of time.”

                Damn near forty days in the desert, and of course he ran out of time. Of course he did. But that’s not an explanation. It’s an excuse. It’s a _how_ , but not a _why_.

                “I thought you weren’t coming,” Tony says, quiet and ashamed, like a confession.

                But he didn’t have to say it. Jason already knew.

                This, all of this, the metal suit and the flight to nowhere, it was a desperation play. This wasn’t a survival strategy; it was a death wish. A half-assed Hail Mary.

                Jason stands up. In the distance, closing fast, he can see the other two helicopters, headed for them. There’s nothing but sky and sand and mountains out here, so much of all three that they seem endless, and Jason cannot get a Goddamn breath, can’t find a single hint of oxygen for his heaving lungs.

                “Hey,” one of the PJs says. “Hey, man, you wanna sit down?”

                “Get fucked,” Jason says, because he doesn’t need air to fight. He’s never needed anything to fight. Take everything else away from him, his mother, his father, everyone and everything, and all that’s left is fight. He’s grateful for it, even if it never really does any good.

                He doesn’t know how he’s going to fix this. But he knows – he’s been taught, over and over, again and again, enough times for it to finally stick – that, sometimes, things get broken bad enough that there’s no fixing them at all.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Instead of separating Tony's POV into its own fic, I'm just gonna roll it right into this one. I think it'll add context. So, there will be two chapters from Tony's POV to catch us up to the others, and then it'll be back to Jason. 
> 
> Also, check the new tags! We're wandering into Tony's less helpful coping mechanisms.

**Before:**

 

                They aren’t even at war. Tony thinks about that a lot. Not _while_ he’s building weapons, because he never really thinks about anything when he’s building. His head doesn’t go silent, exactly, but all those cluttered thoughts - the innumerable muttering theories, the chattering Roman senate of his everyday mind – hushes down into a single, streamlined consciousness.

                When he’s making something, he’s not thinking about anything else. It’s damn near the only time in his life that he’s not thinking about anything else.

                So he thinks about it after, when he’s eating breakfast or sitting in a board meeting or crawling under empty sheets because he’s dating two men and still spends too many nights alone.

                He thinks about how it’s peacetime, and he’s always building weapons of war. They wrested this peace out the ashes of the Cold War, an unsteady, unlikely, hard-won ceasefire, and here he is, crafting the things they’ll use to kill each other next time.  

                The dove of peace is on its maiden flight, and he’s drawing out the schematics for the thing that’ll punch it out of the sky.

                What the hell kind of person is he? He sells fear, masquerading as safety. All the money he’s ever made, he wrung out of the blood of better people.

                “What about clean energy?” He says, to Obie, while Obie herds him to yet another meeting. “The arc reactor,” he says. “What if we---”

                “Tony,” Obie interrupts, indulgently, “that thing’s never going to turn a profit.”

                “Profit,” Tony says, rolling his eyes. “We could change the world, Obie. Who cares about--”

                “The shareholders,” Obie says. “The board. The MIT scholarship recipients. All those charities your mother donates to. All those employees with their retirement accounts tied up in SI stock. All the contractors and suppliers who depend on us to keep their businesses afloat.”

                “Cell phones,” Tony tries, instead. Regroups and pivots. “Communications technology. If we sold people peace instead of war, they’d buy it, Obie. They _would_.”

                Obie stops him, hand curled around his shoulder, and smiles, fond but a little sad, like Tony’s disappointing him. It makes Tony’s skin crawl, makes him want to give up, admit he was wrong, pretend he never said anything.

                He stands his ground, and he wishes it were easier. He builds weapons that people use to kill each other all over the world, but he hates fighting. He always has. Doesn’t have the stomach for it, like Howard used to say.

                _So Goddamn delicate, Tony. Toughen up._

Well, he got better at faking it. From the outside perspective, that’s functionally the same thing.

                “Tony,” Obie says, “you think communications technology is going to bring us world peace?”

                It sounds stupid, phrased like that. But that’s not what Tony meant. Not _really_. He knows a better cell phone isn’t going to make people stop killing each other. It’s not about the phone. It’s about what it represents.

                And, at the very least, it’s about not being complicit. Not enabling worse and worse things. Not being the mind behind the arms race that ends the whole world.

                “I think,” he says, “if we’re closer to each other, if we can understand each other, we won’t be so afraid of each other. Right? It’s harder to kill someone if you know them. If you’ve _talked_ to them. I think--”

                “I want to believe in things like that, too, Tony.” Obie’s hand tightens on Tony’s arm, pacifying, apologetic. “But it’s just not real. Think about it, Tony. You think communications advancements have ever made us better people? Gutenberg made his press, and what did we use it for? The _Malleus Maleficarum_ , _Mein Kampf_. Words don’t end wars, Tony. They start them. Better weapons end them.”

                “Yeah,” Tony says, slowly. He loses his footing, sometimes, with Obie. With Bruce Wayne, too. Or Natasha, if she feels like he needs to learn something. “But we’re not at war, Obie.”

                Obie smiles that same sad smile. And Tony doesn’t cringe, but he can feel himself folding.

                “There’s always gonna be another war, Tony,” Obie says. “You want those boys of yours to be outgunned, when it happens?”

                “Jesus. Of course not.”

                Tony thinks about that, too. Jason and Bucky, lying dead somewhere. Murdered because Tony failed them, didn’t keep up, didn’t arm them well enough, was too busy fucking around in his lab to do his job.

                “C’mon, Tony.” Obie tugs him gently toward the door. “We’ve got a meeting.”

                “Yeah,” Tony says, following. “Okay. You’re right.”

 

 

 

                “You were a very lonely child, Tony,” his mother tells him, once. They’ve been talking about something else, but Tony knows she isn’t changing the subject so much as she’s settling the bedrock for her next point.

                It’s a learned behavior, for her. She never comes at anything head-on, not when she thinks it’s going to provoke a fight. It’s how she always used to talk to Howard, and it would sting, maybe, that she’s using it on him, but it’s not like Tony isn’t marked up with coping mechanisms Howard taught him, too.

                “I think we were all lonely,” she continues, eyes averted, “in that house.”

                Tony snorts. It’s an ugly sound. He doesn’t know how to be anything but ugly, when Howard’s ghost is in the room. “Dad sure had plenty of company.”

                It’s a mean thing to say. Cruel, probably. He’s sneering at his father’s ghost, not his mother’s pain, but the two targets are so thoroughly enmeshed that it’s hard to hit one without tripping into the other.

                Anyway, it wasn’t just the women that Howard would bring around, to his house, where his wife and child slept. It was the parties, the loud, drunk men, the sick-burning reek of cigar smoke and spilled Scotch, laughter and unsteady footsteps in the hallways, heavy hands battering and sliding against walls. It was the way Howard was always so _loud_ , could shake foundations with a single, sharp inhale.

                His mother is quiet. When Tony looks at her, she’s staring hard at nothing, a soft frown on her face. “Your father,” she says, slowly, “was the loneliest man I ever knew.”

                “He’s dead,” Tony says, sharper than he should be. “You can stop making excuses for him.”

                She’s his _mother_ , for God’s sake. She’s had enough of Stark men telling her all the ways she’s wrong. But he can’t shut himself up, so he supposes he’ll have to add his name to the list.

                She looks at him, and she’s not angry. She’s not afraid of him, either. She’s sad. He knows that look. It’s familiar on her face, locks easily into place, like the fine lines around her eyes were etched just to hold it.

                “I had you,” she says, “and you always had me. And he didn’t have either of us, those last few years.”

                “He did that to himself.” Tony’s not sorry for the way he let things end between them. In a better world, things would have been different. In a better world, _Howard_ would have been different. In this one, the best thing he can say about his father is that he could have been worse.

                Probably would have _become_ worse, if Hydra hadn’t killed him when they did.

                His mother is looking at him, and her eyes are so sad that he can’t stand it. He looks away.

                “Anthony,” she says, “people don’t get to choose the way they’re broken.”

                His mother is kinder than he is. She’s more forgiving, better natured. He wishes he were more like her, but the iron core of him is his father, and he’s realistic enough to know that it’ll probably serve him better, in the end.

                Stark men weren’t made for peace. Maybe, if the world was at war again, he’d feel like he belonged in it.

                “You choose how you treat people,” Tony says. “You decide if you’re going to be an absolute asshole to the people who love you. Dad had issues. I don’t care. Everyone does. There’s no excuse for the way he treated us. Treated _you_. And, if it makes you feel better to forgive him, then do it. But I can’t.”

                “Tony,” she says, and her hand grabs his, anchors him in place right before he can pull away. “I’m not talking about what’s between you and your father. I’m talking about what’s between you and Jason and James.”

                “What,” Tony says. He’s stunned by the change in subject, mind spinning in tight circles while he tries to make the convection.

                “You’re lonely,” she says, leaning forward. “I was lonely, too. For years. And so was Howard. And, when it was over, I thought about how many years we wasted, miserable, hoping it would get better.”

                “Mom,” he says. Stops. Clears his throat. He doesn’t think about Jason and Bucky, half a world away, together, without him. He doesn’t. It’s not the same thing. “They have work.”

                “Yes,” she says, hand tightening around his. “Howard always had work, too.”

                “It’s not like that.” It _isn’t_.

                She smiles at him, but that sad look is stuck on her face, like an image burned into a screen. “Be sure,” she says. “Be sure, or leave.”

 

 

 

                When Jarvis dies, Clint’s the first one to show up at Tony’s place. He isn’t who Tony expects, even though it does, objectively, make sense that it would be him. Clint’s benched again, pulled from active duty for a month because he can’t stop throwing himself off buildings, and he’s the only one stateside when it happens.

                Clint’s been cleared to travel alone for something like six months now, but, as far as Tony knows, this is the first time he’s gone anywhere without some kind of SHIELD accompaniment in over five years. He takes civilian air travel cross-country, rents a car, shows up at Tony’s doorstep ten hours after Tony and Maria leave the hospital.

                “Hey,” he says, wide-eyed on Tony’s doorstep, almost breathless. He looks, somehow, like he ran the whole way here. “Shit, Tony,” he says, “I’m so sorry.”

                There’s an awkward moment, where they just stare at each other. Tony has a whole lineup of platitudes to choose from, but he can’t make any of them march past his teeth. He feels like he’s choking.

                And then Clint grabs Tony’s shoulders and pulls him in, and Tony thinks it’s weird, how Clint’s taller than he is now, and it’s weird, how strong he is, and steady, when it feels like the whole damn world is spinning out of control in Tony’s head.

                “It’s alright,” Tony says. It isn’t. He just doesn’t know what the hell else to say.

                “Like hell,” Clint says. “Like _hell_ , Stark.”

                _Like hell_ , Tony thinks. It sounds about right.

                “Get drunk with me?” It’s quiet enough that Clint can pretend not to hear it, if he wants. A while ago, Tony promised Bucky that he’d stop drinking when he was sad, save it for happier times, but he doesn’t know what to do right now.

                And Bucky isn’t here.

                Tony needs him, and he’s not here. So what’s it matter? What’s one more broken promise worth?

                “Sure,” Clint says. He sounds worried, but he doesn’t look it. He flashes a bright, reassuring grin that Tony sees sometimes on Natasha’s face. “Where’s the fancy brandy?”

 

 

 

                Every hour of his life, Jarvis has been on the planet, breathing on the same schedule, heart beating out a similar rhythm. And now he’s gone, and he won’t ever come back. Tomorrow morning, Tony’s going to wake up in a world without him, for the first time. And then every time after that will just be one more day.

                He doesn’t know what to do with his brain. It won’t shut up. He just wants five minutes of peace in his own Goddamn head.

                When he tries to say that out loud, it doesn’t come out right.

                Well, he’s very drunk.

                Clint furrows up his brow and stares at him. “Yeah,” he says finally, slowly. “I get it. Like, with my mom. There every day, and then just gone forever. And I just thought, does it even work? Is that how it’s gonna be for the rest of my life? People die, and you just…keep going?”

                Clint’s very drunk too. He never talks about his mother. Most of the time, Tony forgets that he ever had one, even though he pulled all her medical records years ago, which led him to Clint’s father’s arrest records, and then, finally, to the single newspaper article about the car crash.

                “Cancer,” Clint says, head thunking against the back of the coach. “Fuck.”

                A cancer that Jarvis hid. A cancer he knew about, and didn’t speak of. Nothing to be done, so no need to make a fuss.

                It spread, and it spread, and then it took him over and took him away.

                Tony knows that you don’t lose a fight to cancer. It’s a fight against yourself, your own traitor cells. So, at its worst, it’s a stalemate. Mutually assured destruction. It’s only the people on the outside, the people left behind, that actually lose something.

                “There should be a way around this,” Tony says.

                “Around what?” Clint asks. “Cancer?”

                “Death.” Tony stares hard at the whiskey bottle in front of them, like it’s hiding secrets. “Cancer,” Tony adds, conciliatory, when Clint doesn’t say anything. He waves his hand, frustrated, brain skipping and spinning in ways he can’t control. “All these fucking meat problems.”

                He hears Jason in his head, from so long ago, from the very beginning. _You can’t fix meat problems, Stark_.

But he had, hadn’t he? Bucky was better now. And if it could be done once, it could be done again. Better, differently. And twice was a pattern to be improved on, to be nurtured into something repeating.

                “Woah,” Clint says, which is how Tony realizes he’s been saying these things out loud. “Stark. Hey. That’s some supervillain bullshit. You stay away from that. People have to die. It’s how it works. It’s how it’s always worked.”

                Tony can see how a sniper would need to believe that.

                “Hey,” Clint says. He sounds worried again, and hurt. He’s picking at the label of the craft beer Tony buys because Jason would never, no matter how much he likes it. “That was uncalled for.”

                Tony’s on his feet before he realizes he’s moving. He wavers, and Clint shifts like he’s going to catch him, but then Tony starts walking, lets the momentum carry him forward. “I’m gonna,” he says, grabbing he whiskey on his way. “Work on something,” he finishes, as he leaves Clint behind.

 

 

 

                Tony’s drunk when Bucky and Jason show up. He’s _drunk_. Not the casual, peppy kind of tipsy he gets, sometimes, at art openings and galas and SHIELD parties. He’s the kind of drunk where equilibrium and self-control are compromised. He’s the kind of drunk where the last thing he should be doing is working, because he won’t be able to corral his scattershot thoughts, but he’s working anyway, because he has to, because it’s the only thing that keeps him from thinking about Jarvis.

                Jarvis, the person. Because all he’s thinking about is JARVIS, the A.I.

                “Shit,” Jason says, when he steps into Tony’s lab. “It smells like a distillery in here.”

                “Dropped things,” Tony admits. Dropped things, threw things. Whatever. Sometimes the only way to get to the right answer is to smash through glass, break his metaphorical skull wide open, let it bleed out, alcohol and motor oil leaking all over the floor.

                “Hey,” Bucky says, gentler. He steps toward Tony. “Hey, are you--”

                “Working,” Tony says. “Thanks for coming. Come back? In an hour, maybe two. Four. Look, I’ll find you, okay? Just let me finish this.”

                “What are you working on?” Bucky asks. He’s so fucking _nice_ about it. He always is. He’s got a hand on Tony’s shoulder, holding tight, and he’s staring at the screens like there’s a chance in hell he’ll understand what Tony’s doing, like he’s willing to stand there and listen to Tony blather about his bullshit theories, his never-ending ideas, all the sketched-out schematics, all the endless projects.

                “Say hi,” Tony says, eyes going to the nearest camera. “It’s Jay and Buck, I told you about them.”

                “Hello, Agent Todd,” JARVIS says, politely, “Agent Barnes.”

                “Oh, what the fuck.” Jason’s tone is soft and almost horrified as he stares at the intercom speakers. Tony’s heard him use that tone before, but never about _him,_ never about something that came out of his brain. “Oh, Tony, what the _fuck_.”

                “Didn’t have as much audio recording as I’d would’ve liked,” Tony says. “But JARVIS harvested what he would, synthesized the rest. Sounds pretty good, right? Sounds close.”

                “It sounds like Jarvis is talking to us from your walls,” Jason says, “because you fucking _necromanced him_ into your _computer_.”

                “Jason,” Bucky says, unusually harsh. Tony flinches at the tone, even though it’s not directed at him.

                He hates when he gets this drunk. Or, he’ll hate it later. Right now, the simplicity of it, the honesty, feels somehow good. Feels like he’s shrugged off a boulder, and, yeah, he knows he’ll just have to pick the damn thing back up again, but for now, for this fucking moment, he feels unburdened. So he doesn’t care. It won’t be worth it in the morning, but it’s worth it now, and that’s enough. That’s fine.

                On his good days, he’s a futurist. On days like today, the world could burn up overnight, and he wouldn’t miss it. The past consumes the future, draws it in like a gravitational singularity, a spider, never sated, at the center of the web. The weight of what’s behind him is inescapable. Gravity pulls him down, eats the light of whatever dawn might follow.

                Sometimes his brain is a gift, and sometimes his brain is a prison.

                _So Goddamn delicate, Tony. Toughen up._

                “No, c’mon, this isn’t healthy. And I can’t believe that I’m the one saying it, but this is _fucked up_ , Bucky. And you know it.” Jason’s hand lands on Tony’s chin, tips his head up and back, so he’s looking right at him. Jason’s hands are careful, but his eyes are narrowed, upset. Maybe angry, maybe not. When he’s drunk like this, everything that isn’t praise feels like hate. “Tony, you gotta delete this shit. Do it now, and maybe you won’t even remember you made it in the morning.”

                “No,” Tony says. The idea hurts. It _aches_ , somewhere deep. Feels like Jason’s trying to rip something critical right out of the heart of him. “ _No_.”

                “ _Jason_ ,” Bucky says, again, even louder. “Let it go. We’ll deal with in the morning.”

                “Bullshit,” Jason says. He drops his hand away from Tony, pulls away so he can hiss at Bucky. “ _Bullshit_. It’s now, or it’s not happening. Tony, come on. This isn’t good for you. I’m sorry about Jarvis. I am. But you have to let people go, sometimes. Alright? They die, and I’m sorry, but you’ve gotta let them go.”

                Tony lurches to his feet. It’s harder than it should be. He slips, crashes into his desk, topples what sounds like half his lab onto the floor. But JARVIS will be fine, because he’s backed up on everything Tony owns. There’s no hard drive crash, no power surge, no fucking cancer that’s going to take him away from Tony, not again.

                Bucky catches him, but it’s Jason that Tony’s after, so Tony hooks his hand in Jason’s collar, pulls him in close. “I would _never_ ,” he says, “let you go. I wouldn’t. _Never_.”

                Jason looks at him, mouth twisted up like he’s hurt, and then he shakes his head. “Goddamn it,” he says. “Goddamn it, Tony, don’t do this to yourself.”

                Tony doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s not doing a damn thing to himself.

                “I’m tired,” he says. Fuck, he’s so tired of all of it. Of _all_ of it. Of his brain, of his weapons, of his father’s reputation and his mother’s worry and his own stupid, skittering, stuttering, strobelight mind. Of Jason and Bucky, who bring him up and then leave, let him crash back down alone.

                He’s tired of being alone. With JARIVS, he doesn’t have to be.

                “Let’s go to bed,” Bucky says. Jason opens his mouth like he’s going to argue, but he closes it again, slowly, at the look Bucky gives him. “Let’s just go to bed,” Bucky says, “and we’ll talk in the morning.”

                “Okay,” Tony says. He tips his head forward, lets it rest on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky is a solid presence, warm and sturdy and safe. And he’s here for now, but he’ll be leaving again soon.

                But that’s alright. Tony won’t be alone, when he goes.

                “Okay,” Tony says, again.

                “Goodnight, sir,” JARVIS says, as they head for the door.

                Jason grimaces, but Tony smiles, tips his head toward the camera. “Night, JARVIS.”

 

 

 

                Rhodey invites him out to Afghanistan to lead an in-person weapons demonstration, and Tony’s not sure if he does it because he wants Tony to get out of the house or because he misses him. He guesses, with Rhodey, it could easily be both.

                “You know,” Tony says, “you could just ask me over. I’d bring a sleeping bag, some magazines. We could do personality quizzes, talk about which general you’re crushing on these days.”

                “There’s no general,” Rhodey says, squinting into the sun as they step off the private jet.

                “Too bad.” Tony grimaces, half in sympathy and half because it’s so damn bright he thinks his eyes might burn up in his skull. He really should’ve kept the drinks to a more moderate limit, no matter how long the flight was.

                Rhodey accepts his sympathy with a nod and then slides his sunglasses on. “There might,” he says, smirking, “be a staff sergeant.”

                Tony grins, grabbing for his own sunglasses as he moves to keep up. “Staff sergeant, huh? Who salutes who in that one? I know you’re into--”

                “Okay,” Rhodey says, loudly, knocking the breath out of Tony with an unnecessarily forceful pat on his back. “ _Really_ need you to use your inside voice, Tones, thanks.”

                “Is he here?” Tony sweeps the base with his eyes, assessing every man in sight. “You’re too pretty for any of these people. Do they know how pretty you are? Have they seen you in your fancy uniform?”

                “This is why I said no tequila on the flight,” Rhodey says, but the smile hooking up one corner of his mouth cuts the exasperation in his tone.

                Tony snorts. “Oh, is that why you had five margaritas? To save me from myself?”

                “I see a live grenade,” Rhodey says, hands out, “and I jump on it. That’s who I am.”

                “My hero,” Tony says. “I’d kiss you, but--”

                “Please don’t.”

                “--I’d hate for you to get discharged,” Tony finishes, with a shrug.

                “Yeah,” Rhodey says, herding him along. “That’s what I’m worried about. You’re exactly right, Tony. I am not at all concerned that Jason and Barnes are gonna show up to kick my ass.”

                “Oh, I doubt it,” Tony says. He doesn’t realize it’s going to sound bitter until after he’s said it. Rhodey pauses, gaze suddenly sharpening, smile dissolving off his face. “No, I mean,” Tony says, waving it away, “it’s just that they’re busy.”

                “You think they’re too busy for you?” Rhodey’s frown gets deeper. Tony wants to swallow what he said, get their easy back-and-forth going again. He’s not here to bitch to Rhodey about his _boy problems_ , for God’s sake. He’s not _having_ boy problems. It’s all in his own head. He knows that. “Tony, I swear to God, Jason’s almost been court martialed twice for bailing early on missions to get back to you. And he’s not even _in_ the military.”

                “I know,” Tony says, shaking his head, flailing a little unnecessarily with his hands. “Forget it. Bad joke. Poor taste. Moving on.” He catches his breath, makes an exaggerated face at the worried frown Rhodey’s giving him. “Let’s go blow something up, huh? You love that.”

                “Well,” Rhodey says, after a long pause. He gives Tony a look that suggests they’ll be having some kind of _talk_ , as soon as they’re back on the plane. “You’re not wrong about that,” he says, finally, and points Tony toward a pair of Humvees. “Let’s go show people how smart you are.”

                “Oh, I love this part. Here,” he says, getting his hands on Rhodey’s shoulders and shoving him, gently, toward the far Humvee, “you take that one, and I’ll take this one. That way, none of the kids have to ride alone.”

                “Tony,” Rhodey says, throwing him another _we will talk about this later_ look.

                Tony ducks the look and pulls open the Humvee door. “Now, Sourpatch,” he calls back, “don’t be like that. We rode together the whole way here. These Humvees need designated grownups.”

                “God help us,” Rhodey yells back, as he climbs into his Humvee. “God help us if you’re a grownup, Stark!”

                Tony rolls his eyes, blows him a kiss, and then slams the door shut and looks around at the set of serious-faced kids staring back at him. “Hey,” he says, with an easy grin, “you guys excited to blow some shit up?”

                Those stoic faces crack, and they’re excited. Of course they are. Soldiers in peacetime are always bored out of their damn minds.

                Later, when the demonstration is over and the Humvees are on fire and Tony’s heart is pumping blood out of the massive hole in his chest, soaking his shirt in seconds, he can’t shake the idea that he did this. He _made_ this happen.

                And he can’t stop seeing the words _designated grownup_ stamped over the faces of the kids he just watched die.

                “Rhodey!” He yells, at the cloud of dust and smoke that swallowed his oldest friend, his _best_ friend, the one guy at MIT who didn’t think he was a jackass or a threat or a joke. “ _Rhodey_!”

                There’s no answer. There’s too much noise, or not enough. Tony’s brain can’t track it. He’s cold, and hot, and fading.

                “Rhodey,” he tries, one more time. And then, quieter, so soft that he’s not sure he says anything at all, “Bucky, Jason.”

                There’s nothing. There’s no one. He blinks, and then he blinks again, and, this time, his eyes don’t open again for a long time.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: torture & canonical character death. 
> 
> The torture is never particularly graphic, but it's referenced all through this chapter, so it would be pretty difficult to read around it. The good news is that this still consists of a flashback, so you can technically skip this whole chapter without losing much of the plot. Take care of yourselves!

                He knows he’s been taken. The surgery – if that’s what it is – hurts too much to be anything but back alley butchery. There’s not enough anesthetic, if there’s any at all, and he’s screaming, always screaming, and they’re holding him down.

                He keeps jerking in and out of consciousness. Another cut, and he flinches awake, and then the cut goes too deep, and he passes out.

                No one asks him any questions. No one talks to him at all. They work, and keep working, and it hurts.

                He slips, and then there’s Natasha, appearing in his head. She’s not real. She’s a memory, or a hallucination. She smiles at him. He can’t remember what color her eyes are. The shade seems off.

                “Tony,” she says, “torture is training. They’ll try to train you like a dog.”

                A memory, then. From early on. When she’d been teaching him what to do, if anyone ever took him away, if they tried to get to Jason and Bucky through him.

                “Nat,” he says. “Is that what this is?”

                Is this torture?

                She smiles again. Her eyes flick through five different, distinct shades of green before settling on the one he thinks might be right. “Tony,” she says, but then she’s gone.

 

 

 

                Tony heaves awake with explosions in his head, screams in his ears, in his mind, in his throat. There’s Natasha – _they’ll try to train you like a dog_ – and Rhodey – _God help us if you’re a grownup, Stark_ – and a buzzing under his skin that feels wrong.

                He pulls the tube out of his nose, tries to sit up, and he comes up short, yanked back by something hooked into his chest.

                “I wouldn’t do that,” a man says, from across the room. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

                “What the fuck,” Tony says, staring at the wires running into his chest, following them back to the car battery they lead to. He fumbles at the gauze, peels it away, tries to find out how to get the wires out, and then sees it, a metal device, set _into_ his chest. “What the _fuck_.”

                “Take a deep breath.” The man takes a step toward him, and Tony scrambles back, as best he can. He almost throws himself off the cot he’s lying on, and the man stops, holds his empty hands up where Tony can see. “It’ll be better for you,” he says, “if you try to stay calm.”

                “What _is_ this?” Tony says, gasping. He feels like he can’t breathe, like there’s not enough room in his chest for his lungs to expand. He’s not used to the weight of the device, the way it pushes against the natural expansion of his chest. It’s like he’s trying to catch his breath through a straw.

                “It’s an electromagnet.” The man takes another small, careful step forward, and Tony narrows his eyes, but he doesn’t flinch this time. “There was shrapnel near your heart. I removed what I could, but—in my village, we call people with these wounds ‘the walking dead.’ Without that device, you’d be dead in week.”

                Tony touches it carefully, runs his fingers lightly across the face of it, traces the very tips of his fingers along the red, angry flesh that rings it. He feels like he’s going to throw up. “I’ve got,” he says, and then flounders. He takes a breath, tries again. “I’ve got how many days? With this thing? What’s the life expectancy?”

                “Oh,” the man says, softly, sadly, like it’s an apology, “it’s not what’s in your chest that will decide how long you live, Stark. It’s what’s in your head.”

                Tony swallows. They know who he is. _They know who he is_.

                _They’ll train you_ , he hears, in Natasha’s voice, _like a dog_.

 

 

 

                “They want you to build a missile,” Yinsen says, later, when the men are standing there, holding guns that Tony designed. Tony’s going to be shot to death with his own guns, and isn’t _that_ a beautiful irony? Downright Shakespearean.

                _Et tu, Tony?_

                “Of course they do,” Tony says. His voice is soft and even. He’s telling himself, over and over, to be what Bucky would be, in this situation. Jason would get himself shot, probably, or murder every single person in this cave, and Tony’s trying to avoid the former and doesn’t have the skills or the stomach for the latter.

                _So Goddamn delicate,_ he hears, and that’s Howard. That’s not useful here. _Toughen up, Tony._

Although, Tony will grant that maybe, for once, Howard has a point.

                “This missile,” Yinsen says, and hands Tony a picture of the ICBM he’d just demonstrated for Rhodey and his Air Force pals. Something like that, in the hands of the wrong people, could butcher hundreds of civilians in seconds. Thousands, maybe, if they were clever with their target. “They want you to make that for them.”

                _Everybody breaks_. Natasha told him, years ago, and she frowned when he scoffed. **_Everybody_** _breaks, Stark. It’s not an if, it’s a when. They choose everything else. What happens to you, who does it, how often. They choose **everything else**. You get to choose the when. That’s the only choice you have left. If you have to make it, make it count._

Tony doesn’t know what his timeline is. He doesn’t know how long he can give Jason, and Bucky, and Nat, Clint, Rhodey, Coulson, and everyone else looking for him.

                The only choice he has is when. And _when_ is not right now.

                “I refuse,” he says. His voice doesn’t shake. His hands do, but nobody seems to notice.

 

 

 

                They drown him. They drown him a dozen times, a hundred, and it’s nothing. They won’t kill him. They want him alive. It’s just manipulation. It’s just a mindfuck.

                _You’re they’re weakest point_. Natasha, again. Natasha, wrapped like armor around his mind. _So make yourself strong. Breathe through it. It’s just nerves firing. It’s just meat._

                But it works anyway. He feels like he’s dying, every time. All those panicky neurons, that screaming brainstem response. It _works_.

                _If you can’t be where you are_ , Natasha says, softer and sweeter in his head than she ever was in reality, _be somewhere else._

He thinks about mountains, and skyscrapers. He thinks about flying. He thinks about Jason and Bucky, sleeping on either side of him. He thinks about standing in his mother’s home, with both of them beside him, and he thinks about being safe, and being dry, and breathing whenever he wants, however much he wants.

                They drown him again and again, and, one time, they hold him down so long that he stops thinking about anything at all.

                He comes back gasping, puking and spitting, heaving water that almost killed him onto the boots of the men who held him down. When they pick him up, he doesn’t fight at all, and they take him back to Yinsen, dump him half-consciousness on the floor.

                “Stark,” Yinsen says, dragging him to his cot, “you’re doing very well.”

                Tony struggles out of the wet shirt, can’t stand the extra constriction. He throws it on the floor and curls into a tight ball. He breathes. It sticks in his throat, and he coughs more water onto himself.

                He can’t get his head right. A minute ago, Natasha was standing beside him, saying _There’s always more air in the world, Tony. Don’t panic early. Keep your pulse slow. Hold your breath._

                “Nat,” he says, mumbles it into the stained fabric of the cot. “Natasha. Is she here?”

                Yinsen goes silent. After a long moment, he tugs a blanket over Tony’s shaking shoulders. “There are no women here,” he says.

                “Oh.” Tony knew that. He _did_. Natasha isn’t really here. He doesn’t know why he thinks of her so much, except that thinking of Jason and Bucky hurts so much more. “Good. That’s—she’d hate it here.”

                “I imagine that’s true,” Yinsen says. There’s a dark tone to his voice, some kind of sadness that Tony doesn’t want to wander into.

                “She’d kill all these guys,” Tony says. He clears his throat, takes another long, shuddering breath. He’s shaking, still, and his lips and fingertips are numb. _There’s always more air in the world_. “With, like. A broken Louboutin and a car antenna.”

                Yinsen laughs. It sounds like it was surprised out of him, like he’s almost forgotten how to laugh at all. “She must be quite the woman, your Natasha.”

                “She’s not—no.” Tony shakes his head. “It’s not that.”

                “Ah,” Yinsen says, thoughtfully. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

                _I don’t_ , Tony thinks. But he doesn’t say it out loud.

                _If you can’t be where you are, be somewhere else_.

                He’s home. He’s home, with Jason and Bucky. He’s safe. He’s dry. He can breathe, however much he wants, whenever he wants to.

 

 

 

                Later, when it’s cold and so must be nighttime, Tony sits huddled around the bowl of whatever warmed-up substance they’re trying to pass off as food. Yinsen is staring at nothing, eyes distant but aware, like he’s listening to something Tony can’t hear.

                “I’m sorry,” Tony tells him. “That you’re here. I’m sure you’re here because of me.”

                “I am,” Yinsen says, slowly. He drags himself back from wherever he’s been, blinks his way back into focus, but he doesn’t look at Stark for a long moment. When he does, he’s frowning. “You know,” he says, “I met your father once.”

                _So Goddamn delicate, Tony._

                “Sorry for that, too,” Tony says, mouth twisting up into a wry half-smile.

                Yinsen smiles, too. It seems about as genuine as Tony’s. “Interesting man,” he says. “Brilliant, of course. But very drunk, when I saw him. And proud. He was giving a lecture on integrated circuits. Someone in the crowd afterward contradicted him.”

                “Oh,” Tony says, lips pulling away from his teeth, “I’m sure he loved that.”

                Yinsen’s quiet for a moment, staring at Tony thoughtfully. “The person who contradicted him, they cited you.”

                Tony laughs. It’s harder to laugh, with the new weight in his chest. “God,” he says. “Did he walk out immediately, or punch the guy first?”

                Yinsen hums and takes a bite of his dinner. They’re silent for a while, and Tony thinks they’re done. Yinsen hasn’t spoken to him much. He’s a strange man. Compliant with their captors, but oddly apathetic about the danger they’re in. Tony can’t tell if he’s dissociating or just superhumanly emotionally resilient.

                Whatever he is, Tony’s glad he’s here. It’s selfish, and he knows that. But he wouldn’t want to be alone.

                “His reaction,” Yinsen says, after at least a full minute of silence, “was interesting. He seemed angry.”

                “Yeah,” Tony says, with a shrug. “He never did like to be shown up.”

                “But, by his own son?” Yinsen furrows his brow, stares at his food. “Isn’t that the point of fatherhood? Isn’t that what we all hope for? To bring a brighter light into the world?”

                Tony swallows. He puts his bowl down. He isn’t hungry anyway. All that adrenaline has left him shaky, and vaguely nauseated. “You have kids?”

                “Yes,” Yinsen says, “two sons. One’s about your age. The other, a few years younger.” It’s the most alive he’s seemed since Tony woke up in this cave. He smiles, small and proud, and Tony feels like an asshole, like the worst kind of person, because here’s this father who loves his sons, and Tony’s the reason he can’t be with them.

                “We’ll get you back to them,” Tony says.

                Yinsen blinks and looks at him. His eyes are sad for a second, and then they’re nothing at all. “Yes,” he says, “I’ll see them soon.”

 

 

 

                Tony wakes up with the door clanging open, and Jason, in his head, saying, _God, I fucking love you_.

                He’s dazed from that, unsettled by how much it stings. But thinking of Jason means he’s thinking about Bucky, and Bucky says, _Focus. Count your steps. Remember the way out_.

                So when they drag him and Yinsen into the cave, Tony counts. He memorizes the route. He tries not to think about what it means, that Yinsen’s coming along this time. Yesterday, when they’d drowned him, there hadn’t been anyone around who understood what he said, when they brought him up to breathe.

                There’d been a certain degree of protection in that. He didn’t have to watch his mouth so closely. He’ll have to be more careful now.

                They take him outside, and he’s blinded by sunlight after days in the grainy gray darkness of the cave. He rubs at his eyes with one hand, cradles the car battery to his chest with the other, and, when he can finally see, his eyes focus on his name, repeated a dozen times, a hundred.

                His name, stamped on boxes and boxes of weapons and ammunition.

                He’s surrounded by SI products. They have an arsenal, and he built it for them.

                “He wants to know what you think,” Yinsen translates, dutifully, when the man who’d ordered Tony drowned yesterday stops talking.

                Tony swallows. He holds the car battery against him, feels the steady beat of his pulse and the drag of the electromagnet in his chest. He feels the sun on his face.

                He doesn’t think a single Goddamn thing.

 

 

 

                “What you saw today,” Yinsen says, later, “is your legacy, Stark.” His tone is soft, more thoughtful than condemning. Tony flinches anyway.

                _Breathe through it,_ Tony thinks. _It’s just nerves firing. It’s just meat._

_So Goddamn delicate, Tony. Toughen up._

He feels like he’s going to throw up. He remembers, back when he found Hydra with his weapons, years ago. He remembers when Bucky almost died, pulled apart by a bomb Tony designed. He remembers the promise he made. _Never again_ , he’d told himself. _Never again_.

                He wonders how many dead civilians there are, how many maimed or murdered, because of things he dreamed up in his lab. How many dead _kids_. He thinks about Bruce Wayne, trying to warn him.

                He thinks about the words in his own mouth: _Can you even see the difference between orphaned kids and enemy combatants?_

                _At 16,500 kilometers, can you?_

                Tony swallows, and doesn’t say anything. What’s there to say? He didn’t mean to? It wasn’t supposed to be like this? It doesn’t _matter_. He built those weapons. He made them. He manufactured them and sold them, and everything he is, everything he has, was built on the ash and bone of people worth more than him.

                His legacy is a graveyard. The only thing he ever gave this world was a faster bullet and a flashier death.

                “You have to make a choice,” Yinsen tells him. He’s looking at Tony with a pity that Tony doesn’t deserve. “How do you want the world to remember Tony Stark?”

                “I don’t deserve to be remembered,” Tony says.

                At this point, the best he can hope for is that, someday, nobody will remember him at all.

                Yinsen crouches down in front of him. He curls a hand around Tony’s shoulder and stares at him, sad and focused, grim. “Then you’ll have to think about what the world deserves.”

                Tony breathes in, dragging air against his teeth. His heart thuds in his chest. He drops his head into his hands. He doesn’t cry.

                _If you can’t be where you are, be somewhere else_.

                His whole life, Tony’s been somewhere else. He’s been drinking champagne at parties while bodies drop in the streets. He’s been in his lab, music up so loud that the bass hits like a fist fight, drinking whiskey and playing God, while shrapnel punches holes in innocent lungs. He’s been lying between Jason and Bucky, while the next warlord who’ll take shots at them is arming himself with weapons Tony designed.

                Tony doesn’t deserve to be anywhere else. He made this world.

                If he wants a better one, he’ll have to build it himself. So, he has to get out of here, and he has to _fix_ this.

                But it’s been days since he was taken, and no one’s come for him. Tony knows exactly what Bucky and Jason can do. He knows what SHIELD can do. They should’ve found him before he even woke up from surgery.

                But they haven’t found him. They haven’t saved him.

                They aren’t coming. They aren’t here, and they aren’t coming. They can’t find him, or maybe this was a coordinated attack that somehow hit them too. He’s alone.

                He thinks about what Natasha said. _You get to choose the when. That’s the only choice you have left. If you have to make it, make it count._

_When_ is not right now. But he’s staring down a tunnel that only leads to one place. He knows where he’s headed. He can lean into the brakes Natasha built into his mind; he can dig in his heels with all the stubbornness Howard taught him, spit venom with the rage he borrows from Jason, dissociate like Bucky on a bad day, but those are stall tactics, not solutions.

                _If you have to make it, make it count_.

                It’s easier to let things happen. Tony’s been letting them happen his whole life. It’s easier to dip his hands in motor oil, keep them clean of blood. But he thinks things have been easy long enough.

                _The solution_ , he hears, in Jason’s voice, _is to murder the fuck out of the problem._

                Maybe it’s time to stop building weapons. Maybe it’s time to become one.

 

 

               

                As soon as Tony starts requesting supplies, the accommodations improve. No one’s _friendly_ , but no one’s holding his head under water or bashing his face into cave walls, either. They eat, twice a day, and they work from the moment they wake up until the moment they pass out.

                The arc reactor takes the most from him. He lets his mind get lost in it, feels his fingers twitching over phantom keyboards, working through databases and scientific journals and other people’s research. He spends a whole night, sitting awake, head tipped back against rock, sketching things out in the dusty floor, while his brain skips and stutters and seizes, jumps and dashes, spits up something useful right when Yinsen is starting to stir.

                When the arc reactor clicks into place in his chest, he feels like he’s coming home to his own skin. There’s a machine in his chest of his own making, and that’s better, that feels closer to right. He drops the car battery on the cave floor, and he doesn’t look at it again for days.

                With the suit, he cheats. He knows what he’s building. It’s been in his head for years, going through endless updates and revisions and refinements. He draws the schematics on several different sheets of paper, stacks them up only once, to show Yinsen what they’re building.

                “And what nightmare did you pluck this from?” Yinsen asks, fingers tracing the outlines of the suit.

                “I’ve got people,” Tony says, taking the papers and shuffling them, rotating them, making it so that no one else will be able to decipher what he’s building. “Soldiers, kind of. I worry about them.”

                Tony hasn’t said anything to Yinsen about Jason and Bucky. It feels like bad luck, invoking them. He doesn’t want them in this place. He can feel Yinsen staring at him now, and he turns away, focuses instead on the next step of the project.

                “This is a suit of armor,” Yinsen says. “You are not a soldier, Stark.”

                Tony knows what he is. And he knows how much that’s worth. “Maybe it’s time to be something else.”

 

 

 

                It makes sense, of course, that something goes wrong. It’s a miracle that so much has gone _right_. He’ll have to tell Natasha, if he sees her again, that she neglected his education. This whole time, they’ve been worried that someone will use him to get to Jason or Bucky, and it hadn’t occurred to either of them that someone could be used to get to _him_.

                The second they push Yinsen down and draw the coal out of the fire, Tony knows he’s going to give in. He doesn’t know how to fight this kind of torture. He can’t be somewhere else while Yinsen is screaming. He can’t. He _won’t_.

                But it leaves them with so little time. Not enough time. And when there’s not enough time to complete a project to optimal standards, concessions have to be made. Sacrifices.

                The plan had been to get Yinsen to safety. The plan had been to get out of here, before _when_ became _now_ , before he could be convinced to add more names to the list of innocent people who wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t been born.

                If a sacrifice was required, he was ready for it. He’d weighed it out. He’d measured it against other possible outcomes. He’d prioritized. He’d been _careful_.

                It’s not that he doesn’t believe Jason and Bucky will find him. He knows they will, eventually. But he doesn’t think they’ll find him in time. And he thinks it’ll be better, in the end, if they find him wrapped in iron, laid out next to the bodies of the men who caused this. Better than finding him dumped somewhere, bullet in the back of his head, with a half-dozen new missile designs selling on the black market.

                Jason, he knows, would want him to die fighting. Bucky would be proud of that.

                His mother, when they tell her, when they explain it to her, would be proud of that, too.

                And Rhodey, of course. _God help us if you’re a grownup, Stark!_

But it was supposed to be Tony. It wasn’t supposed to be Yinsen.

                There’s a long, drawn-out second after Yinsen grabs the rifle and runs into the tunnel, where the suit is ready, the cave is ringing with bullets ricocheting off stone, and Tony doesn’t move. He thinks about that Hydra agent he shot in Gotham, how everything smelled like blood for days afterward. He thinks about all the years he’s spent, with this suit in his head, and how he could never once convince himself to build it.

                He didn’t want to be this. He doesn’t want to do this.

                _So Goddamn delicate, Tony. Toughen up._

                _Breathe through it. It’s just nerves firing. It’s just meat._

                _Think about what the world deserves._

He goes. He has to. Yinsen’s out there with a gun and no body armor, and his sons need him to come home.

                Tony doubles his lifelong kill count before he makes it out of the room they’ve been caging him in. After the first shock of it, the haze that settles over his mind, the stinging slap of _you’ve broken something that can’t ever be fixed_ , he finds that it’s an easy thing to do.

                Point, shoot. Shoot again. _It’s just meat_.

                He finds Yinsen on the ground, bleeding out, full of bullets he took to save Tony the trouble. “Hey,” Tony says, crouching down beside him. “Hey, get up. Come on, old man. We’ve gotta go. We’ve gotta get you out of here. We had a plan.”

                Yinsen stares up at him, wide-eyed and breathing hard. There’s that familiar look on his face, like he’s anchored somewhere else, not really here at all. “This,” he says, “was always the plan, Stark.”

                “No,” Tony says, because it _wasn’t_. “Bullshit. I’ll carry you, old man. I’ll get you out of here. I promised I’d get you back to your family.”

                Yinsen’s mouth hooks up, a sad, sympathetic smile. “My family is dead.” It hits like a punch. Tony damn near flinches. Yinsen reaches up, settles a comforting hand on Tony’s armor.  “I’m going to see them now. It’s okay. I want this. I was waiting for this.”

                Tony breathes in. This isn’t right. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

                Yinsen, with his two sons. Yinsen, who was so damn proud of them that Tony had been _jealous_ when he saw the look on his face.

                _Isn’t that the point of fatherhood? Isn’t that what we all hope for? To bring a brighter light into the world?_

“Thank you,” he says, because he doesn’t have anything else. “Thank you for saving me.”

                Yinsen closes his eyes. He smiles again. “Don’t waste it,” he says. “Don’t waste your life, son.”

                Yinsen fades out, and something opens up in Tony’s chest that sucks in every single good thing he’s ever been, hollows out the kindness and the mercy, packs them up and stores them away.

                When Tony butchers the rest of the men, he doesn’t care at all. He doesn’t even count them. He destroys everything. He starts a fire that blows up their arsenal, and when it’s over, when he’s sure that anyone who isn’t dead is dying, he flies out of there.

                The suit can’t stay airborne for long. That’s not its purpose, and he doesn’t have the fuel. But Tony sure as hell isn’t going to die here.

                After a single glorious arc of flight, the suit starts plummeting, tripping into freefall, and Tony can’t breathe. He can’t fucking breathe. He thinks he might’ve been shot. There’s something wrong with his shoulder, and there’s blood in his mouth.

                His brain tries to calculate how hard he’ll hit, when he crashes to the ground. He can’t hold the numbers in his head.

                He’s dizzy. It’s hot, hard to breathe. He’s baking alive in this fucking suit, and he’s falling.

                _You get to choose the when. That’s the only choice you have left._

                _When_ , he thinks. _When, when, when-when-when._

Something hits him, a sideways impact he’s not braced for, and all the cascading failures overwhelm the system, and he’s out.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everyone, I've got a busy couple weeks coming up. It shouldn't disrupt my posting schedule, but there's a chance next week's chapter will be a day or so late. Check my [tumblr](https://thepartyresponsible.tumblr.com/) for updates.


	7. Chapter 7

**After:**

 

                It’s not that Jason means to disappear. It’s just that he can’t hold himself in place. Anyway, it’s easy to slip away. Everyone’s attention is on Tony.

                He lets himself wander. He shouldn’t. He’s _dangerous_ right now, and he’d made that promise to Rhodes, swore he wouldn’t get any other nice military people killed over this. But if he stays in place, he’s going to lash out, and he has no fucking clue what form that anger will take, when it breaks out of him. So, he walks.

                In Gotham, he’d have found a few fights, thrown some creeps and criminals into the concrete. In D.C., he’d do something similar, although he’d be a bit gentler about it to save Coulson the paperwork. Out here, there’s nothing.

                _I ran out of time. I thought you weren’t coming_.

                Fuck.

                Jason knows what that’s like. But he never thought he’d hear it from this side of things.

                “Hey,” Natasha says, when she finds him. “Coulson wants to know where you are.”

                Jason snorts. “No, he doesn’t.” It’d be a damn disaster, if Coulson found him right now. Things are fragile between Coulson and the team, and Jason’s hands are itching to rip every fragile thing apart. “Tell him to leave me alone for five fucking minutes, Nat. C’mon.”

                Natasha eyes him, sidelong and assessing. Her mouth twists down into a frown. “If you have to do this,” she says, “do it now. Tony’s going to need you when we get back. So is Bucky.”

                “Well, maybe they’re fucked,” Jason says, loud. Louder than he means to. He almost _yells_ it, and he hates the way this feels, all the buzzing in his veins, the ache in his teeth like he won’t come down from this until he’s molar-deep in someone’s throat. “Maybe they’re _fucked_ , Nat. Maybe they should find someone else to need.”

                He’d known, from the very beginning, that he was going to fuck this up. He remembers, that first handful of days, how he’d kept telling himself to leave. He’d known, and he’d done it anyway, and that’s the story of his fucking life, honestly, so he’s not sure why he’s surprised.

                Natasha doesn’t touch him, but she steps neatly in front of him. “Jason,” she says, “he panicked early. He called it too quick. He’s a _civilian_. What did you expect from him? This isn’t his world. He should’ve given us more time.”

                “He gave us a month,” Jason says. “A _month_ , Nat. We didn’t find him.”

                “We _did_.” She searches his face, and he waves her off, but she keeps looking anyway. “Jason, you’re not clear on this. You need to be.”

                “I’m _fine_ ,” Jason says.

                He has to be. He gets that. He doesn’t need her to tell him that. He doesn’t need a Goddamn thing from her right now, except for her to leave him the hell alone. 

                She stares at him. Things stretch out between them, and Jason feels a shift, but he doesn’t know what it means. She nods. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll tell Coulson I couldn’t find you.”

                “Sure,” he says, with a heavy exhale. “Sure, Nat. Tell him whatever the fuck you want.”

 

 

 

                Coulson sends Clint next. Or Nat does. Or Clint sends himself, because, when Coulson doesn’t feel like playing counselor, Clint usually fills the role. Because he is, somehow, the resident sweetheart on the team.

                “Tony woke up,” Clint says, as he sprawls out next to Jason. “He’s real fucking high, though. I don’t think he’ll remember you weren’t there. He was too busy trying to get Buck to date him.”

                Jason’s climbed on top of the sleekest, prettiest plane he could find. It’s not quite as beautiful as something Tony would build for them, but it’s close, looks like some other engineer’s best attempt at mimicry. Some Air Force asshole had yelled at him to get down for about five seconds before one of the PJs who’d escorted them earlier decided to intervene. It’s too bad, because Jason would’ve been happy to fight him.

                Hell, he’s thinking about fighting _Clint_ , and he hates fighting Clint. He’s gotten better about it, but there was a stretch of years there, early on, where Jason could scare the hell out of Clint by grabbing him wrong or cornering him unintentionally, and Jason eventually learned to avoid all the tripwires, but he still feels bad about finding them. 

                “Yeah,” Jason says, because Clint staring at him like he expects a response. “Bucky’s the handsome one.”

                “I’ve always said it,” Clint says, tone leaning toward agreeable, even while his smirk suggests he’s not buying it at all. “You’re a five with a pair of tens, Jason. Still baffled as to how you pulled that off.”

                Jason rolls his eyes. “Aren’t we all.”

                Clint squints up at the sunset, and he’s quiet for a long time. Clint makes it easy to be around him. He can disappear right next to you, if he wants to. And still, Jason can barely tolerate him right now. He has to stop himself from hooking a hand in the collar of Clint’s stupid sleeveless shirt and throwing him right off the plane.

                “What’re you doing out here, Jason?” Clint asks, finally. “Why aren’t you in there with them?”

                Jason doesn’t have an answer for that. Not one he wants to say out loud. He closes his eyes, instead, pretends like he can’t hear him.

                “You know,” Clint says, “I’m not an expert at romantic relationships.”

                Jason laughs out loud, and it’s _mean_ , meaner than he means to be, but he’s also just fucking startled into it, by the sheer, brazen understatement of what Clint has just said.

                It’s not that all of Clint’s relationships have been terrible. Objectively, out of everyone on the team who isn’t Phil Coulson, he probably makes the best partner. He’s sure as hell the most reliable.

                But Clint overinvests in relationships. Not so much that most people tend to notice – hell, not so much that the people he’s _dating_ tend to notice – but bad enough that the whole team’s developed ways to help him past it.

                Clint’s guarded with strangers, but he has a ludicrous habit of handing his heart to anyone who stays over long enough to share morning-after coffee. He once fell in love with a mission target because he saw the guy feed half his sandwich to a stray dog. And Clint had pulled the trigger anyway, but he’d been weird about it for weeks afterwards.

                “Okay,” Clint says, “first of all, fuck you. We don’t all meet our soulmates at age twenty, when they kidnap us at gun point. And second of all, how many exes are you still on good terms with, again?”

                Jason rolls his eyes and declines to think about it. “How many of your ex-girlfriends have tried to kill you?”

                “That was one,” Clint says. “That was _one time_ , and it was a professional misunderstanding. She sent me an apology pizza, and we’re fine now, actually. We got drinks last time she was in town.”

                Jason sighs. “What’re you here for, Clint? If I let you say it, will you go away?”

                “I’m just saying,” Clint says, “that I’ve maybe got more practical experience with how these things end than you do. And if that’s what you’re trying to do, you’re being an idiot, because I’ve never seen anyone work better than the three of you.”

                “That’s not what I’m doing,” Jason says. He _isn’t_. He didn’t go through all of this shit to get Tony back just to walk away from him.

                But he also can’t shake the thought that maybe there’s nothing left to walk away from. Maybe it ended sometime in that long stretch of days, when Tony waited for them, and they didn’t show. Maybe Jason wouldn’t blame Tony for it, if he walked away.

                “Okay,” Clint says, as he starts slithering his way down the plane. “Then I apologize. You’re waiting for _them_ to end it, and that doesn’t make you an idiot. That makes you a coward.”

 

 

 

                Jason doesn’t show up because Clint called him a coward. Although, he does level one hell of a _look_ at Clint, as he passes him in the hallway. It’s bad enough that Coulson side-steps between them, gives Jason a steady, chin-lifted look of his own, and it’s fucked up, how enmeshed he is in these people. How that look from Coulson pisses him off and calms him down, all at once.

                This whole mess feels like some kind of ending. And it’s reassuring to know that, however things shake out, Coulson’s still looking after Clint.

                Even if he is a mouthy asshole.

                “Hey,” Tony says, kind of slurring, “you’re Jason.” He’s propped up in a hospital bed, hooked up to at least four separate machines, with Bucky’s jacket pulled over him and zipped right up to his throat.

                “Well,” Jason says, helpless in the face of that, “yeah.”

                “Oh, sure,” Bucky says, with a roll of his eyes and a smile that hurts, because Jason hasn’t seen it in a fucking month. “You remember _his_ pretty face, but not mine.”

                It’s going to hurt. Jason knows that. It’s going to _hurt_.

                “C’mere,” Tony says, gesturing Jason closer, reeling him in like a fish on a line with an uncharacteristically clumsy wave of his hand. “C’mere, c’mere.”

                “Hey,” Jason says, as he walks over to the bed, like it’s nothing. Like he doesn’t count off every step he takes with the sort of precision he usually saves for counting bullets in someone else’s magazine. He leans against the plastic rail, smiles down at Tony, and determinedly ignores the look Bucky’s giving him. “Missed you.”

                Tony gives him a wide grin, a little goofy, a little uncoordinated. He hooks their fingers together, like he can’t even hold hands without making it some kind of complicated. “Didn’t miss you,” he says. “Brought you with me.”

                Jason swallows. He doesn’t look at Bucky.

                He remembers, when the Joker had him, he’d brought his people with him, too. Alfred, and Dick, and Bruce. His mom. The first one, the real one. You bring angels, when you fight demons. That’s how it works. He knows what the brain does, when it has to, the lies it’ll tell itself.

                He doesn’t like to think of Tony, in the dark of some cave, thinking about him. Someone like Tony should have better armor, better angels.

                “The solution,” Tony tells him, earnest and low, “is to murder the fuck out of the problem.”

                The first time Jason said that, Bucky was trying to leave them. Tony wasn’t in the room, that first time, but it’d become something of a personal motto, something he said a lot, in those early days, when they’d been hunting Hydra all over the world. And now Tony’s feeding it back to him, and it’s like a second way forward, illuminating in Jason’s mind, but he’s not sure it’s real, and he has no idea where it leads. He doesn’t have any faith in it, which is the problem he’s been trying to square since they watched Tony fall out of the sky.

                He’s not sure what they’re supposed to kill this time. The only problem he can see is that they didn’t get to Tony before Tony gave up on them.

                “Aw, hell,” Tony says, suddenly sad. “I’m late.”

                Jason casts a confused look Bucky’s direction, but Bucky’s not looking at Tony. Bucky’s staring at him, mouth pressed flat, eyes narrowed. Bucky looks like maybe he wants to fight about something, which is fine with Jason, although he could’ve used that about three hours ago.

                That’s nothing new. Bucky’s been giving him shit he doesn’t need, the right thing at the wrong time, for weeks now.

                “I’m late,” Tony says, again, like a request, like an apology.

                “What the hell are you talking about?” Jason says, because it’s starting to unsettle him, honestly, and he doesn’t know what the fuck kinda drugs they pumped into Tony, but he wishes they hadn’t. Tony’s got enough weaknesses already, with all the alcohol he drinks. Jason doesn’t want Tony realizing that there are other substances he can use to alter the troublesome chemistry of his head.

                Tony’s drops Jason’s hand and reaches up, slow and wavery and resolute anyway, and wraps his hand around the back of Jason’s neck. He pulls him in, until their foreheads rest against each other.

                “Don’t worry,” Tony says. “I fixed it. I built it. ‘s gonna be fine now. You’ll see.”

                “What’re you talking about, Tony?” Jason searches his face, tries to figure out what that glimmer of brightness behind the haze of drugs means. “What the hell are you trying to tell me?”

                Tony smiles, but his eyes are worried. He doesn’t cry much. Not at funerals, not at sad movies, not when the press publishes anyone shitty article pulling him apart and pulling out the ugly parts, holding them up to the light. He looks a little like he’s going to cry now, and Jason wants to stop him, wants to leave, wants to fucking disappear.

                “The solution,” Tony says. “I built it.”

                Tony kisses him, and Jason kisses him back, leans in, almost climbs in the Goddamn hospital bed, because he wants to, and he _missed_ him, and it’s been hell, without him.

                He tastes like mouthwash, and, under that, he tastes like blood. Jason keeps kissing him anyway. If Gotham taught him anything, it sure as hell taught him to take what he can get.

 

 

 

                When they step off the plane onto American soil, Maria Stark pulls Tony into a hug that lasts for nearly a full minute. And then she grabs Bucky, says something soft and happy and relieved into his ear, and then she goes for Jason, who’s standing, hands in his pockets, glaring hell at the paparazzi who are ringing the airfield with telephoto lenses.

                Jason’s not braced for a hug, so he gets his arms trapped until she shifts, puts her hands on his shoulders and leans back to give him a beaming, watery smile. “I knew you’d bring him home,” she says.

                “No,” Jason says, shaking his head. “He did it. He brought himself home.”

                She blinks, head tipping, and gives him that particularly Stark look of laser-focused concentration. “Sweetheart,” she says, and he’s so startled that he feels himself double-take, “who do you think taught him how to do that?”

                Jason has no idea what to say to that, but, fortunately, Tony’s doing something so damn ridiculous that it gets everyone’s attention.

                “—press conference,” he says, to Pepper. “Really, Pep. Set it up. Let’s go.”

                “Oh,” Pepper says, eyes going wide. “I’m not sure--”

                “Like hell,” Jason says, incredulous. “The _press_? Fuck right off with that shit, Tony.” He blinks, grimaces, and shoots a guilty look at Tony’s mom. “Sorry, Maria.”

                “I wouldn’t advise a press conference right now,” Coulson says, because he is, maybe, a little more diplomatic than Jason.

                “Agent,” Tony says, breezy, undaunted, out of his Goddamn mind, “you’re qualified to give advice on national security, not SI business. Pep, make the call. Say, half an hour? Who wants cheeseburgers?”

                “Huh,” Clint says, eyebrows up. “Is this how you do post-mission crash, Stark? Get manic and crave fast food? Guess I could’ve predicted that.”

                Nat _hmms_ beside him, tips her head and considers Tony carefully. “I wouldn’t have predicted so many clothes stayed on.” Which, while fair, seems like a hell of a thing to say in front of Tony’s mother.

                “I’m not crashing,” Tony says, floundering a little at the word _crashing_ , like it puts a bad taste in his mouth. “Been there, done that. Crashed into the desert, cradled in Wonder Woman’s very nice, very toned arms. Can’t say it was as fun as the imagery would suggest, but I’ve had worse.”

                “Get manic, crave fast food, and run off at the mouth a lot,” Clint says, thoughtfully. He pats Bucky on the shoulder. “Have fun with that. Sounds busy.”

                “I’m not gonna do it at _them_ ,” Tony says. He sounds offended. Jason doesn’t flinch, and neither does Bucky, but Nat gets a look on her face like somehow she caught some of that shrapnel. “Pep, c’mon, press conference. Get your phone out, let’s go.”

                Pepper pushes her hair behind her ears and takes her phone out of her pocket. “Tony,” she says, which means she’s upset, because otherwise she’s one of maybe five people Jason likes who’s an actual professional, “do you have to do this right now? You just got back. Your arm’s in a sling. You look---”

                “Handsome?” Tony tries. “Roguish? Charming? Battered, but resolute? Pep, please don’t come at me with negativity right now. I was just held in a cave for a month. Rhodey,” he says, a little sharp, turning to Rhodes, “tell me I’m pretty.”

                “You’re a damn heartbreaker, Tones,” Rhodey says, immediately. “Now, go home and rest. Pay someone to do the press conference. Let Pepper do it. You know she loves those things.”

                “Betrayal,” Tony says, “from all sides. Well, good thing it’s my company, which means I can do what I want.”

                “Anthony,” Maria says, folding her arms across her chest, “until you’re reinstated as CEO, I’m afraid it’s my company.”

                Tony blinks. He rocks back on his feet, eyes darting from Maria to Coulson, to Jason, Bucky, Rhodes, and Pepper, and then finally back to his mother. “That,” he says, slowly, “should be Obie. Why are you doing Obie’s job, Mom? Where is he, anyway?”

                They hadn’t told him yet. Which was a mistake. Which Jason would’ve done, immediately, as soon as he woke up, if he’d been there to do it. Jason’s more of a _rip off the band-aid, pretend it was never there_ type, but everyone else had thought it’d be better to get Tony home, get him somewhere he could breathe, make sure that hunk of metal he put in his own damn chest wasn’t going to incline him toward heart attacks before telling him that Obadiah Stane, his old friend, his stand-in father, had sold him out for nothing more lucrative than the money Tony would’ve given him, if he’d asked.

                So now they get to stand there, watching, while Tony puts all the pieces together himself.

                “Obie?” He says, once, kind of wide-eyed. And then, smaller, softer, like he’s clicking the puzzle pieces together and washing his hands of it all once, “Stane?”

                “Tony,” Maria says, steady and quiet, “let’s go home.”

                Tony looks lost, standing there. Looks worse than he’s looked this whole time, including when Jason and Bucky were kneeling in the sand, ripping pieces of metal away from him. That makes sense, though. Of course it does.

                Jason knows Tony. He’s known him for seven years, but he figured out this part of him in the first twenty-four hours. Tony’s got no tolerance for rejection. It’s the fastest and easiest way to break him apart.

                If there’s any element of this that hurts worse than the fact that Jason and Bucky and everyone else failed to save him, it’s going to be that Stane put him there to begin with.

                Jason moves first, but Bucky’s closer, gets an arm around Tony’s shoulders before Jason can get within reaching distance. That’s fine, though, because it gives Jason a chance to get to the door of the first car, pull it open before Happy can even get out.

                “Cheeseburger,” Tony says, as he climbs into the car, voice bright and fake and a little too loud. “Cheeseburgers, plural, and no press conference.”

                “Okay,” Pepper says, as she slides into the passenger seat and shares a look with Happy. “Sure, Tony, as many cheeseburgers as you want.”

 

 

 

                Tony is not, technically, supposed to mix the lingering pain medication in his system with any kind of depressant, but, when prompted, JARVIS reports that: “It’s medically ill-advised, sir, but unlikely to cause any serious or permanent damage.”

                Tony salutes his ceiling with the open bottle of whiskey in his hand and free-pours into three tumblers. “JARVIS,” he says, with feeling, with real, genuine warmth, “I missed the hell out of you, buddy.”

                “I’m very glad you’re back, sir,” JARVIS returns, and Jason feels weirdly guilty, because he’d talked to Tony’s mom, he’d talked to Pepper and Rhodey, but he’d never once thought that someone should talk to JARVIS.

                “Tony,” Bucky says, “you shouldn’t be drinking right now.”

                Tony rolls his eyes and goes back to pour another double’s worth of whiskey in the tumbler closest to Bucky. “And a little extra for you, Buck, my favorite buzzkill.”

                “Jason,” Bucky says, turning to him, hands up and eyes serious. Like he’s asking for help. Like he expects Jason to fix this.

                “Oh, hell no, Barnes,” Jason says, swooping the nearest tumbler off the bar. “It’s your turn to be a Goddamn grownup, and it’s my turn to indulge in some really fucking unhelpful coping mechanisms. Turnabout, asshole. It’s a mean bitch.”

                Tony’s eyes slide between the two of them, curious and assessing, but a little too bloodshot for his usual awareness. “Well,” he says, into the stormy silence settling between Jason and Bucky, “cheers to what I’m sure was a casual, throwaway comment, and not-at-all a shitty, egregiously uncalled for emotional sucker-punch.”

                “Sure,” Jason says, lifting his glass. “Cheers.”

                Tony taps his tumbler against Jason’s and then tosses it back, drains half of it in one long swallow and comes up sighing, eyes closed, like he’s having a religious experience. “God,” he says, “ _God_ , I needed that. I need a dozen of that. Hey, super soldier, will you stop being disappointed in me and join the party?”

                “I’m not disappointed in you,” Bucky says. And then, slowly, his eyes move to Jason, dark with some kind of accusation, and Jason damn near throws his tumbler right at his face.

                “Got something to say, Barnes?” Jason says, straightening up.

                “Don’t see much point in saying anything,” Bucky says, “since you’re clearly not in the mood to listen.”

                “Oh, wow,” Tony says. He stares at them for a long moment and then nods decisively, downs the rest of his whiskey, and grabs Bucky’s tumbler off the bar. “Okay,” he says, “here’s the thing. Here it is: I just got out of a cave. A fucking _cave_. I was there for a month, they hooked a _car battery_ to my _chest_ , and I murdered them. All of them. I fucking murdered people. I don’t know how many. I didn’t count. Double digits, definitely.”

                Bucky turns toward him, mouth open, and Tony cuts him off with a sharp sideways slash of his hand.

                “Nope,” he says “No. Shut up. Listen. You two assholes have been _weird_ since I got out. And I’m weird enough, okay? My head is a weird fucking place right now, so what I need is for you two to _stop_ being weird. Or, alternatively, let me know how long you’re gonna be weird, so I can go work until you’re done.”

                “You’re not gonna work,” Jason says. “You’re mixing whiskey and pain meds. You’re gonna pass out in about half an hour.”

                “Sure,” Tony says, with a nod, “so am I gonna pass out cuddled up with a welding torch, or with one or both of you two assholes?”

                “Damn it, Tony,” Jason says, “I’m trying to have a fight with Barnes, and you’ve gotta sweet-talk me like that?”

                Tony shrugs. He puts on a smile that’s sharp enough, almost, to hide the unease in his eyes. “Locked in a cave,” he repeats, “for over a month. And it got a little lonely in there. I’ll sweet-talk you whatever way you want.”

                Jason goes still, and Tony shrugs again, eyes darting away. He goes to lift the tumbler, full of at least four shots of whiskey, and Bucky moves forward, swipes it out of his hand and downs the whole thing, quickly and efficiently, before either one of them can react.

                “Holy shit,” Jason says, impressed despite himself. And _interested_ , however reluctantly, in the way Bucky wipes his mouth after, leaves his lips a little wet with whiskey, makes Jason feel like maybe someone should lick it off.

                That’s his problem, sometimes. He wants to fight, and he wants to fuck, and, with Bucky, sometimes it’s both at once.

                “Welcome to the party,” Tony says, and reaches for the whiskey bottle.

                “The party,” Bucky says, “is going to bed.”

                “Well, hell,” Tony says, with a smirk, “sounds like my kind of party.”

                “Look,” Bucky says, putting his hand over the top of Tony’s tumbler before he can pour himself another round. “We’ve got a lot to talk about. All three of us. There’s a lot of things we need to sort out. Let’s just do it in the morning, okay? We shouldn’t do this right now.”

                “Didn’t figure you for a runner, Barnes,” Jason says. He considers leaving it at that, but Bucky shoots him an exasperated look, and so he can’t help it, has to push. “Oh, wait, seems like that’s a new hobby of yours.”

                “ _Fine_ ,” Bucky says, a warning shot that leads to some serious cognitive dissonance, makes Jason want to leave the room and also desperate for the fight he knows is coming. “Fine. We’ll do this now. Let’s talk about it, Jason. Let’s talk about what’s been going on in your head. Where’d you go, when we got back to the base?”

                “Yeah, you can get fucked,” Jason says, into the last dregs of his whiskey.

                “Alright,” Tony says, setting the bottle down hard enough to _thunk_ against the bar, “what the hell are you fighting about?”

                “Nothing,” Bucky says. “We aren’t fighting.”

                “Yeah,” Jason says, mock-agreeable, “Bucky’s right. We’re not fighting. We’re not doing a Goddamn thing.”

                “I’m not--” Tony cuts himself off with a sharp shake of his head. His hand curls protectively around the arc reactor in his chest. “I’m not fucking _delicate_ , okay? I think I’ve proven that. So stop lying to me. Stop trying to _hide_ things from me. Tell me about Stane, and tell me what’s going on with you, and tell me what the hell is wrong with _Phil Coulson_ , and why--”

                “Hey,” Bucky says, soothingly. “Hey, calm down.”

                “The hell with calming down,” Tony says. There’s something wrong in his voice. Something new. He’s _shaking._ “I wanted to _come home_. I thought about home all the fucking time while I was down there, while they-- I thought I was going to die, and then I didn’t, and I got to go home, but it’s not—this isn’t—what the fuck. What the _fuck_?”

                Bucky’s on the wrong side of the bar, hand still balanced over a glass, and Jason’s on the wrong side, too, but he hops it, clears the whole thing and lands inches from Tony.

                “Shh,” Jason says, which is stupid, but it’s all he can think of. “C’mon, Tony, you’re fine. You’re fine.”

                “I wanted to come home,” Tony says, wide-eyed and confused, like he’s midway through the realization that home’s a place he doesn’t have anymore.

                “We’ll get there,” Jason says. It feels like a lie, but he’ll do what he can to make it true. “C’mon, Tony.”

                He pulls him in, wraps his arms around him and tugs. Tony’s smaller than him, always has been, but the weeks he’s been gone hollowed him out some, chiseled him down into something leaner. He doesn’t feel right in Jason’s arm, tense and too thin, trembling, and the arc reactor presses against Jason’s chest, feels sharp, almost like a warning, like teeth over his heart.

                “Buck,” Jason says, tipping his head behind him, “can you--?”

                “Yeah,” Bucky says, clearing the path between the lounge and the bedroom, pulling open the door, “you got him?”

                “Got him,” Jason says, and picks Tony up. It’s easier than it used to be, and it’s never been hard. Tony usually fights it, has too much of an ego to tolerate being hefted around, but he leans in, tucks his head under Jason’s chin and curls up.

                “I don’t fucking need you to _carry me_ ,” Tony tells him. His tone is poisonous, damn near toxic, but his hand is wrapped so tight in Jason’s shirt that he’s pretty sure the fabric would give before Tony’s grip.

                “Yeah,” Jason says, “I know you don’t. I’m doing this for me.”

                Tony breathes out, curling somehow even closer. Jason can feel the way he’s breathing, shakey and too fast. Shallow.

                “Get the whiskey,” Jason says, as he starts toward the bedroom.

                “Think he’s had enough,” Bucky says, a little hesitant, eyes warm and worried, all that icy fight thawed out of him.

                “The whiskey is also for me,” Jason says, with a roll of his eyes, but there’s no bite to it. He doesn’t want to fight anymore. For the first time in his life, he’s sick of it, maybe. Just wants to fall into bed, somewhere safe, and stay there.

                “Yeah,” Bucky says, doubling back to grab the whiskey and gathering up some bottles of water while he’s at it. “Yeah, okay.”


	8. Chapter 8

                It’s a strange, disorienting slide into awareness. Everything is right, but something is wrong, and Jason’s jerking upright, flailing for a weapon and damn near throwing himself out of the bed before he realizes where he is.

                He’s in bed. At Tony’s house, in Tony’s bed, and Tony’s next to him. Bucky’s on the other side of him, and it feels late, but the lights are turned up to full brightness.

                “Mr. Stark,” JARVIS says, volume low but tone urgent. “Mr. Stark, wake up.”

                Bucky wakes in that creepy, robotic on-switch way he does when something’s startled him. His eyes open, and there’s no lazy assessment, no lingering haze of sleep. There’s just Bucky, awake and aware, eyes meeting Jason’s and then snapping immediately to Tony.

                “JARVIS?” Jason says, studying the flickering of Tony’s eyes under his eyelids, the tension in his jaw. “What’s wrong?”

                “His heartrate is elevated,” JARVIS says. “I believe he is having an unusually distressing dream.”

                “Right,” Jason says. He can fucking _tell_.

                Bucky’s frowning, staring down at Tony’s face. “Do we wake him up?”

                “No,” Jason says, rolling his eyes, “we pour some drinks, get some popcorn, watch him suffer.”

                Bucky looks up at Jason, and, wow, he’s pissed. Jason thinks, a little meaner than is probably necessary, that it’s nice to see _some_ kind of emotion from him.

                “Well,” Jason says, defensively, “for fuck’s sake, Bucky.”

                He would understand the hesitation if it were either one of them. If it was Nat. Or Clint or Coulson, even, because the two of them don’t default to violence as quickly, but it’s trained into them, the same way that it’s trained into everyone else on the team. But this is _Tony_. And, honestly, if Tony lashes out and bloodies Jason up a little, it’s not like he hasn’t earned it.

                Jason reaches out, puts a careful hand on Tony’s shoulder, and shakes. “Hey,” he says, “Tony, hey, wake up. It’s a dream. You’re dreaming, okay? You need to--”

                Tony flinches awake, going from mostly motionless to _scrambling_ , and Jason yells something that has aspirations of being a curse before Tony fucking _tackles_ him back onto the bed. Jason gets a glimpse of Bucky’s face, wide-eyed and alarmed, and he thinks it’s going to be bullshit – just absolute, unfair _bullshit_ – if he has to admit that Bucky was right, but then he realizes that Tony’s flailing has mostly stopped, and he’s not throwing punches or elbows. He’s not trying to hurt Jason at all.

                That knee Jason took to his kidney was just collateral damage in Tony’s attempt to wrap himself around Jason, hooking his legs and arms around him and burrowing in, like he thinks someone’s going to try to pull them apart, like he’s worried about someone coming to take him away.

                “Hey,” Jason says, running a hand down Tony’s back. “Morning.”

                Tony holds on, and he shakes, heaving air into his lungs in big, desperate gasps. “Fuck,” he says, face pressed into the crook of Jason’s neck. “The fuck is—I can’t _breathe_.”

                “Sure you can,” Jason says, as soothingly as he knows how. He makes desperate eyes at Bucky over Tony’s shoulder.

                “Tony,” Bucky says, crowding up behind Tony, who immediately reaches back with one arm, gets a hand around Bucky’s neck and tugs until the two of them are bracketing him, surrounding him completely.

                “It’s okay,” Tony tells them, eyes screwed shut, still trembling, like he’s trying to stop himself from hyperventilating but just can’t quite catch the pattern of it. “It’s okay,” he says again. “It’s _fine_.”

                “Tony,” Bucky says, “sweetheart, breathe a little slower. Try, alright?”

                “It’s _fine_ , Buck,” Tony tells him. His tone is fierce, almost angry. The arc reactor is digging into Jason’s chest, and he doesn’t know how the hell Tony can breathe with that thing.

                Jason keeps running his hand up and down Tony’s back, tries to calm him down by just _willing_ it as hard as he can. “Hey,” he says, because he has to say something, “while you were gone, Bruce stayed at Phil’s place. They were housemates, Tony, I swear to God. I bet Coulson made breakfast every morning. I bet Bruce doesn’t even know _how_ to cook his own breakfast.”

                “Housemates?” Tony asks, startled. He blinks big, bloodshot brown eyes at him and takes a single deep breath that shudders out of him in a long, shakey exhale. Jason can feel Tony’s heart, pounding out a rhythm that’s racing faster than Jason likes.

                “Yeah,” Jason says, “and Clint went up to Gotham, and I think he and Robin are a thing now.”

                “I missed it,” Tony says. His face screws up, and he drops his head back to rest on Jason’s shoulder. “Goddamn it, I _missed_ it.”

                “’s okay,” Jason say, bewildered and worried and so incredibly out of his depth. “It’s okay, Tony.”

                Bucky loops his arms around Tony’s waist and then hauls him back, presses their chests together and takes deep, steady breathes until Tony finally seems to catch the pattern. “They kept going off on patrols together,” Bucky says, “Clint and Tim. There were a couple times he didn’t come back to the safehouse until almost noon.”

                “Robin brought him _home_?” Jason says, a touch incredulous. “Clint knows where he--”

                “Blindfolded him,” Bucky says, with a tight, sideways smile and a shake of his head. “I asked.”

                “Clint let Drake _blindfold him_ so he could get _laid_?” Jason slaps a hand over his face, tries not to despair at the ongoing disaster of Clint’s romantic endeavors. “That fucking moron. You try to raise them right, and then they see one domino mask, and everything goes to shit. God, _blindfolded_. I bet there wasn’t even a safeword.”

                Tony laughs, and it’s a little unnatural, high and thin, but it’s a laugh. He tilts his head back against Bucky’s shoulder and smiles, and he looks tired, wrung-out and exhausted, but he’s _aware_ in a way he hadn’t been, a minute ago.

                “I think it’s romantic,” Tony says, because he’s a moron.

                “Of course you do,” Jason says, because he’s in love with a moron. “You’re the one who lured us into a sex dungeon on our first date.”

                “Was that our first date?” Tony says, still a bit breathless but apparently recovered enough to level an incredulous look Jason’s direction.

                “No,” Bucky says, with conviction. “Our first date was when you pulled me out of my own puke and then Jason tried to fight me in the shower.”

                “You kicked my ass in that shower,” Jason says, and it’s fucked up. It’s a fucked up memory from a fucked up time, and he’s _mad_ at Bucky anyway, but he can’t help it. He’s grinning at Bucky like a damn idiot.

                “I did,” Bucky says, with a smaller, sweet smile of his own.

                It’s bullshit, really, because Jason’s whole life has been a lesson in this, but he’s discovering all over again how disorienting it is to be angry at someone, disappointed, betrayed, and pissed the fuck off, while also loving them, stupidly and endlessly and helplessly. 

                “I think it was that bar,” Tony says, interrupting Jason’s thoughts. “In Missouri. With those guys Bucky beat up, and that bartender, with her baseball bat. What was her name?”

                “Rosa,” Jason says, because how the hell could he forget? Rosa, with her generous free pours and constant cigarettes, and her voice like a pit-bull with bronchitis. Rosa, who’d sized up Tony and Bucky, given Jason a free shot of whiskey, and said, _Don’t let ‘em break your heart. That small one’s kinda flashy._

                Tony’s a little less flashy now. Subdued, tired. There’s a pulse of anxiety that’s replaced that strobelight of curiosity and trouble.

                “Rosa,” Tony says, with a wide grin that he can’t seem to hold on to. “Right.”

                Jason leans forward to kiss him. He can’t hold how he’s feeling under his skin, has to share it somehow. He fits his mouth against Tony’s, and Tony tugs him close, kisses him sweet and eager, a little sloppy because he’s still catching his breath.

                “I missed you,” Jason says, forehead against Tony’s, eyes shut tight. He can feel Tony’s breath against his mouth, and Bucky’s warmth, just a few inches away, and it feels like overlapping signals, like the confusing hot/cold of fever, because it hurts, and it doesn’t. It’s exactly what he wants, and he can’t fucking stand it; he wants to burrow into this forever and wants to rip his fucking skin off in his hurry to get away.

                His face is lit with the glowing blue of Tony’s arc reactor, and he thinks _You almost didn’t get this back. You almost lost this forever._

And then, immediately after that, _You **did** lose that forever. You didn’t save Tony in time. You got something else. It won’t ever be what it was. _

                “Hey,” Tony says, and there’s a hand under his chin, lifting his face up. “Hey, Jason, it’s okay. I’m here. Jay, I’m right here.”

                He isn’t, and he is. There’s some other version of Tony, who doesn’t heave awake in the middle of the night thinking he can’t breathe, who doesn’t know what it’s like to be held by enemies for weeks, who never launched himself into the air without a plan for landing, who never really believed that Jason and Bucky wouldn’t save him, who doesn’t fucking _glow blue_ at night. And that version of Tony is gone. Dead, or sacrificed, or hatched out of.

                Jason has something else now. And it’s shitty to think that he wants the other one back, because it’s his own Goddamn fault he doesn’t have that person anymore. But it’s that first one he fell in love with.

                “Shit,” Tony says, when Jason finally opens his eyes. He searches Jason’s face, mouth pulled down into a worried frown, and what the fuck is wrong with him? What is _wrong_ with Jason, that he’s making this harder for Tony right now? “What the hell happened while I was gone?”

                Jason shrugs and sits back, puts a little space between them so he has better odds of getting himself under control. “You know,” he says, “turns out, things kinda go to shit when you’re not around.”

                Tony’s frown deepens. He flicks a quick glance over his shoulder, back at Bucky, who’s watching Jason with an expression on his face that would be guilt, if it weren’t busy being defensive.

                “Wait,” Tony says, slowly. “Why was Bruce at Phil’s place? And why was only one of you in Gotham?”

                Jason snorts and runs a hand over his face, schools his expression into something blank, something better suited for a fight. “You wanna take that one, Buck?”

                “It wouldn’t have done any good,” Bucky says, slowly, like someone building the barricades they intend to hold against a future assault, “if I’d stayed. And someone needed to go.”

                “Natasha could’ve gone, you asshole. Natasha _wanted_ to go. You split up her and Clint, too, you know, with your bullshit. It was a selfish fucking thing.” It’s weird, saying that out loud. _Selfish_. It gives so much away. “Maybe it would’ve done some good for _me_ , if you’d stayed. You think about that?”

                Bucky’s face blanks out some, but his eyes stay sad, and his mouth stays a flat, stubborn line. “I was trying to make things easier for you.”

                “Oh, get fucked,” Jason says, because _like hell_. Like hell was it _easier_ for Jason, spending all those nights alone. “You fucked off to find a mission, to keep yourself occupied. You left me to deal with everything. You left me to call Tony’s _mom_ and tell her, every couple of days, that all we had was more nothing. So you can get _fucked_ with that ‘thinking of you’ bullshit, Barnes. You weren’t thinking about me. You were thinking about how to get rid of me, so you could pretend none of this shit was happening.”

                Bucky’s face closes off by increments, the longer Jason talks, and he should shut up. He _knows_ that. But he’s never had as much control over his temper as he would’ve liked. Once the tripwire is triggered, there’s no controlling it; it’s just about weathering it.

                Bucky’s face drains of emotion until, by the end, Jason’s staring at the Winter Soldier.

                “Wow,” Tony says. He takes a deep breath and then exhales. “Okay.” He blinks once, twice, and then nods, quick and decisive. “I’m gonna need some coffee for this. I’ll just—I’ll be right back.”

                He slides off the bed, scoops a shirt off the floor, and sets off into the house, in his stupid “Property of Stark Industries” boxers and Bucky’s t-shirt.

                “Way to go, Barnes,” Jason says, when the door clicks shut behind him. “You freaked him out.”

                “Right,” Bucky says, with a roll of his eyes that he almost manages to suppress. “That was definitely my fault.”

                Jason scowls at him, but he can’t put much heat behind it. Bucky’s watching him, careful and almost wary, and it takes the fun right out of fighting, when the other person won’t fight you back.

                He shifts away, kicks his legs off the side of the bed and rests his feet on the ground. “It really was an asshole move, you know,” he says, quietly. Because it _was_.

                Bucky sighs. He moves to sit next to him, not quite leaning into him but close enough to touch, if Jason wanted to. Which he does. Which is exactly why he won’t.

                “I know,” Bucky says, after a moment of silence. “I would’ve stayed, if you’d asked.”

                Jason makes a low, disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “I shouldn’t’ve had to fucking ask, Buck. Jesus Christ. Tony was missing, and then you _left_.”

                “Had to get my head right,” Bucky says. He’s staring down at his metal hand, studying the joints. “Tony, getting taken like that. Brought up a lot of memories for me that I usually—it wasn’t good. I was having a hard time staying…here, I guess. Instead of back there.”

                “And what the fuck,” Jason says, “do you think _I_ was thinking about? You’re not the only walking Geneva violation, Bucky. C’mon.”

                “I know,” Bucky says. He squares his jaw, ducks his head, stares at nothing. There’s no part of this that Jason’s enjoying. None of it feels cathartic, none of it feels like any kind of antidote. It feels like he’s just drinking more poison. “I’m sorry.”

                “Fuck your sorry,” Jason says. “It’s not enough.”

                Bucky sighs and says nothing. They’re quiet for a long time, waiting for Tony to get back. Finally, Jason clears his throat and glances up toward the ceiling, at the nearest speaker. “Hey, JARVIS,” he says, “where’s Tony?”

                “Mr. Stark is in his workshop,” JARIVS says, immediately. “He asked not to be disturbed.”

                “Goddamn it,” Jason says, rubbing at his eyes.

                He thinks about going back to sleep. He’s tired, that bone-deep post-mission fatigue finally settling in, and he hasn’t slept well for weeks. But he doesn’t want to stay here, with Bucky, and he doesn’t want to sleep without him. So.

                “I’m gonna go work out. Let me know if he shows up with coffee.”

                He doesn’t look back. He knows he’ll have to forgive Bucky soon. Hell, some significant part of him forgave him pretty much instantaneously. But he wants to hold onto anger – the simplicity of it, the familiarity – for a little bit longer.

 

 

 

                Jason’s sweaty and underdressed when his whole damn team walks into the gym, most of them dressed for travel. It’s a little comforting to see that Bucky, at least, is dressed like a civilian, in jeans and a gray henley that he must’ve left here last time they were in California. But Coulson’s in a neat, perfect suit, and Clint and Natasha are in SHIELD uniforms, looking ready to drop into their next mission.

                “Jason,” Coulson says, with a smile that’s smaller than usual but a little more genuine than anything Jason’s seen out of him recently. “Good morning. Nice to see you’re staying in shape.”

                Jason rolls his eyes and then shares a brief, knowing look with Bucky. Tony’s got a hell of a gym, and Jason does his best to keep his locker stocked with workout clothes, for whenever he stops in unprepared, but Tony is a Goddamn klepto who never brings his own clothes and steals whatever he can find.

                Generally, Tony leaves his pants alone, because even the combination of a drawstring and Tony’s truly fantastic ass can’t actually keep Jason’s pants on him, but Jason is forever getting downstairs to find that every single one of his shirts is missing.

                Which is why Jason is standing here, sweaty and shirtless, like some asshole who’s still gotta work to get laid.

                “Hoping to flirt my way out of trouble,” Jason says, just to see if he can make Coulson blink. “I figure, if Tony gets a good look at these abs, he’ll forget that we left him in a cave for a month.”

                “Well,” Clint says, with an easy, amiable shrug, “sure, I can see how that might work. It’s kinda working on me right now.”

                “You should flex more,” Natasha says, with a considering look. “It’s the shoulders that really sell it.”

                “Alright,” Bucky says, “cut it out.” He’s got his hands shoved in his pockets and an amused, tolerant look on his face, and he’s staring, right at Jason. “Coulson, give him the bad news.”

                “Oh,” Jason says, grabbing a towel so he can at least deal with whatever this is without sweat on his face. “Great, super. There’s bad news? What a fucking novelty. Let’s hear it, Coulson. Are we fired? Are we fugitives? Do you and I have to go to that bullshit military court again and remind them how I’m not actually theirs to boss around?”

                “Fury benched the entire team,” Coulson says, with remarkable nonchalance, “pending passed psych evals.”

                “Aw shit,” Jason says. “Well, that’s the end of the team. We had a good run.”

                “Passed mine this morning,” Clint says, with a smug smile. “Nat made hers cry, so she’s gotta do it over again, but Coulson got cleared in about half an hour.”

                Jason stares at the three of them. Coulson’s calmer and steadier than he’s been since they pulled that bullshit with Stane, and Coulson’s recovery seems to have gone a long way toward cutting Clint’s tail-chasing anxiety. And then there’s Nat, straight-shouldered and serious, with an unusual slant to her mouth that could be an apology but might also be a _fuck you_.

                Jason balls up the towel. “Which one of you assholes recommended the psych evals?”

                Natasha lifts a hand, flutters her fingers at him, and, yeah, that look on her face is absolutely a _fuck you_. Jason throws the towel at her face, and she dodges, neatly, expertly, showing off a little bit, like she thinks this is some kind of joke.

                And maybe it is.

                _Jason, you’re not clear on this. You need to be._

                He thinks back to the base in Afghanistan, where Natasha had pushed him and then given up, too quickly. How the hell had he missed that? Jesus, maybe he _does_ need a psych eval.

                “I was considering it anyway.” Coulson looks lighter, quieter, like some heavy weight has been shrugged off his shoulders. Jason does his best not to take that personally. “The team wasn’t ready for this sort of pressure. I should’ve made sure you were better prepared for it.”

                Jason thinks it’s absolutely bullshit that Coulson’s decided this whole thing is in on him. When, in reality, it’s mostly on Stane, and a little bit on Bruce Wayne, and approximately fuck-all percent Coulson’s fault.

                “Christ, Coulson,” he says, “the team is _fine_. We’re _fine_.”

                Coulson raises his eyebrows at him. It’s been awhile since he gave Jason that particular look of dry skepticism.  “Jason,” he says, “you tried to kidnap and torture an American citizen on American soil. Without orders. Without notifying me.”

                “Yeah, but.” Jason waves his hands. Bucky gives him a sympathetic look. “Alright,” he says, grudgingly, “so we got a little wild. But Strike Team Foxtrot got _arrested_ in _Vegas_ last year, so I really don’t fucking see why we have to do psych evals. They only had to do community service.”

                “Well, Jason,” Coulson says, deliberately calm, “as similar as the two might be for me, psychologically, there is actually a vast legal difference between torturing a man and refusing to leave a strip club stage even after considerable prompting from management.”

                “Also,” Clint adds, after a second, “Fury wants us training the recruits, so. That’s kinda community service.”

                Jason groans. He should fight this, probably. It should sting, the idea that his team is leaving him. That Natasha made this call, and Coulson agreed, passed it up to Fury as an official recommendation that’s going to keep Jason from his team until he can convince some bullshit psychiatrist that he’s sane enough to take orders but not so sane that he’ll balk at the uglier ones.

                A few years ago, Jason would’ve been pissed about this. It would’ve felt like abandonment. He guesses maybe he’s losing his edge as he gets older, because he can see how this might be them, trying to look after him.

                And he’s in no Goddamn hurry to leave Tony right now anyway.

                “What’s it gonna take?” Jason asks, because it’s expected, probably, that he throw some kind of fit. God knows they’ll probably _worry_ , if he agrees right off. “What do you want, Coulson? Trust falls? A ropes course? The team is _fine_.”

                “Oh, a ropes course.” Clint sounds _interested_. He fixes a hopeful look on Coulson. “Coulson?”

                Coulson rolls his eyes and gives Clint a brief, exasperated look that’s so transparently fond that even Jason, who’s feigning irritation, can’t keep the answering smile off his face. “I knew,” Coulson says, “that I was going to regret letting you spend all that time with Nightwing.”

                “Circus buddies,” Clint says, with a nod and a grin.

                “Hey,” Jason says, “fuck off with that shit. We’re not buddies with them right now. If you see Nightwing on a ropes course, you cut the fucking rope.”

                “That’s exactly the sort of attitude that’s going to put a hold on your psych eval, Todd.” Natasha’s smiling while she says it, small and a little cautious, hidden behind a wry tone and assessing eyes.

                He’s not _mad_ at her. If she were as fucked up as he is, he wouldn’t want her in the field either. The nicer thing to do would’ve been to tell him before she told Coulson. But, back in Afghanistan, that would’ve ended in a fight. He can’t blame her for not wanting to take that hit. He would’ve been shitty about it, if she’d tried.

                He’s been pretty shitty to everyone. He’s no good with panic. He doesn’t like what it makes him into.

                “You idiots stay out of trouble,” Jason says. Without him or Bucky, they’ll need to change how they run missions. Clint’s sturdy, and Natasha’s mean, but Jason and Bucky take the hard hits, and, without them, they’ll need to be really fucking careful that those hits don’t land on someone not built to take them.

                He looks to Coulson, because it’ll be Coulson’s responsibility to keep them safe. And Coulson doesn’t make mistakes, not about his team. So it’ll be fine, because it’s Coulson, and because it’s Nat and Clint.

                It’s a weird fucking thing. Jason trusts them to look after each other, but he’s worried anyway.

                “We’ll do our best,” Coulson says, with a quirk of his mouth that’s almost a smile. “The local SHIELD branch will be in contact.”

                Jason nods. He shifts on his feet. It doesn’t feel right, the team leaving without him. But it would feel worse, the team leaving _with_ him, and Tony left behind to deal with all this shit, just him and JARVIS and Dum-E and whatever other friends he can invent for himself.

                “If you’re not cleared for duty in six weeks,” Coulson says, “Fury will probably want you to come back to D.C.”

                _Six weeks_ , Jason thinks. Coulson’s giving him six weeks. He hopes that’s enough. He doesn’t think about what he’ll do, if it isn’t. That’s not a choice he wants to make, even if he can already tell which way he’ll lean, if he’s pushed to make some kind of decision.

                There’s nods and half-smiles and a brief, tight hug from Clint, who has one wavery moment, where he looks up at Jason like he wants to apologize for something he didn’t do. Jason sets him right by slapping him on the back hard enough to knock the wind out of him, shake those stupid words out of his mouth, and then ruffling his dumb hair, shoving him back toward Nat, who’ll look after him, while Jason’s busy looking after Tony. And Bucky, probably, once he gets over being pissed at him.

                And then his team is leaving. It’s an odd moment. Jason feels some part of him being tugged after them, even while most of him is rooted, anchored in place. It’s right, and he knows that. It’s right for him to stay.

                He doesn’t want them to leave.

                “If you get into shit,” Jason says, to their backs. “If you do something stupid and get into shit, just call me, alright? I don’t care if it won’t be SHIELD official. You can pay me back in beer and gratitude.”

                Coulson gives him a short, arched-eyebrow look over his shoulder. It looks like doubt.

                “I fucking will, okay?” Jason says, offended. “I’ll come bail you assholes out.”

                Clint grins at him, and Natasha rolls her eyes, and Coulson’s expression shifts just enough for Jason to realize it wasn’t doubt at all. “Jason,” Coulson says, faintly exasperated, “I think you’ve more than proven exactly how far you’re willing to go to help the people you care about.”

                It feels like a suckerpunch, and it must look like one, too, because Bucky’s hand settles, heavy and comforting, on Jason’s shoulder.

                “Hey,” Jason calls, as they get almost to the door. “I didn’t say I was gonna do it because I care about you. I said _beer_. I said beer, and gratitude. And I take my gratitude on the rocks, just to be clear.”

                They don’t answer, although Clint turns around at the last minute to blow a kiss that turns, somehow, into him flipping Jason off with both hands. Jason is stunned, offended to his marrow, because he knows a Dick Grayson move when he sees one, and he can’t believe Barton would have the audacity to throw that shit in his face right now.

                “Goddamn it,” Jason says, after the door closes behind them. “Goddamn it, Bucky, they grow up so fast.”

                Bucky makes a quiet, pensive noise. His hand is still curled protectively around Jason’s shoulder, and Jason thinks he should probably shrug it off, because he’s still pissed. But maybe he’s not pissed enough. He leaves it where it is.

                After a moment, Bucky tips his head Jason’s direction, gives him a thoughtful look. “You took that better than I expected.”

                “How fucking dare you,” Jason says. “You know I always take it like a champ.”

                Bucky snorts, shocked, and then flashes him one of those bright, beautiful grins that reminds Jason of all those old pictures of Sergeant James Buchannan Barnes, back before the world got its toxic hooks into him.

                Jason’s shit at telling people how he feels. He always has been. So he just grabs the front of Bucky’s shirt and pulls in him, kisses him like he’s on the very edge of biting him. Bucky kisses him back, hands sliding down to fit around his hips and tug him closer.

                It’s nothing like that goodbye kiss they’d shared back in D.C. There’s not much sweetness this time around. They’ll have to earn that back, over time. Jason bites at Bucky’s lower lip, licks into his mouth, and Bucky lets him, hands tightening to the point that there might be bruises, when this is over.

                Jason pulls back right when he feels himself starting to get lost in it. It’d be some kind of cathartic, maybe, to let them get carried away, but he doesn’t want to put his hands on Bucky when he’s still so angry. He has to be careful, sometimes. And Bucky’s worth being careful for.

                Even if he is still an asshole.

                “Okay,” Jason says, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, not even bothering to hide his crooked grin at the flushed, dazed look on Bucky’s face. “Let’s go see what kinda nightmare our mad genius is brewing up this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: There will be no update next Monday, because this week is wild. But I'll be back in two weeks! 
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](https://thepartyresponsible.tumblr.com/) for fic updates, ficlets, and a lot of ridiculous gifs.


	9. Chapter 9

                JARVIS won’t let them into the workshop. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Mr. Stark asked not to be disturbed.” He doesn’t _sound_ sorry, and he’s capable of sounding any way he judges appropriate, which means this is some kind of deliberate calculation.

                “Hey, JARVIS,” Jason says, looking straight at the nearest camera, “you remember how I wanted to delete you the moment you were born?”

                “Indeed, sir,” JARVIS says. “How fortunate for me that Mr. Stark declined to do so.”

                “We’ve come a long way, you and me,” Jason says. “Be a shame if we ended up back in the same place.”

                “Jason.” Bucky’s frowning at the glass walls of Tony’s workshop, which went opaque the moment they stepped off the elevator. “Tony doesn’t want us in there. We’re not getting in.”

                “Not with that attitude, we’re not.” Jason taps the knuckles of his right hand against the glass. It’s sturdy. Of course it is, because it’s the walls of Tony’s _workshop_. But Bucky could break it, if he wanted to, with one solid swing of that metal arm.

                “The last thing he needs,” Bucky says, “is more people trying to control everything he does.”

                “Projecting,” Jason accuses, tone going dismissive and a little singsong as he knocks his hand against the glass again, puts enough force behind it that JARVIS flashes the wall red in warning before settling it back into black.

                “Maybe.” Bucky crosses his arms over his chest and frowns. He seems hesitant to fight about it, probably because they’ve been fighting about every Goddamn thing for the past twenty-four hours. “But, of the two of us, I’m the one with more experience in the after-effects of long-term captivity.”

                He’s right. And he’s acknowledging it, which is a step forward for him. As long as Jason’s known him, Bucky’s had a shitty habit of viewing his time with HYDRA as something he somehow participated in, rather than something that was done to him. No matter how many hours he logs in therapy, some days every kill the Winter Soldier made is a kill _Bucky_ made, and not a kill HYDRA made through the use of Bucky’s body.

                So it’s nice to hear that Bucky’s coming around on that point. But it’s also awfully fucking convenient for Bucky to figure it out _now_ , when he can use it as leverage.

                “He shouldn’t be alone,” Jason says.

                “He’s not alone, sir,” JARIVS says, helpfully. “We’re collaborating on a project.”

                Jason grits his teeth. He knew, the moment JARVIS first greeted him, that this shit was going to be a problem, that _JARVIS_ was going to be a problem. Because however fancy the algorithms, JARVIS is still just a spinoff of Tony’s own thoughts. He’s not Athena. He didn’t spring fully-formed and fully independent from Tony’s head. He’s Jarvis’ helpfulness without his wisdom, all the forward motion without any of the brakes.

                He’s the offspring of some of the best and brightest parts of Tony, and Jason can acknowledge that JARVIS is an amazing, unique, _genius_ thing while also realizing that it’s incalculably dangerous, letting Tony Stark cloister himself off with an AI that’s still too young to know when to say _yes, but why?_

                This is exactly the kind of feedback loop that never ends well for Tony. This is exactly why Jason and Bucky and Nat have chased off so many so-called “friends” of Tony’s over the years. Because when Tony gets caught up in asking himself _what if_ , sometimes he can’t see his way back to _but what will happen if it do?_

And Tony made JARVIS, so Jason has faith that, someday, JARVIS will learn when he needs to say ‘no’ to Tony. But Tony _made_ JARVIS, which means, even if JARVIS understands when he should stop Tony, he won’t have the capacity. Whatever independence Tony grants him, it’s still granted, and can be curtailed.

                It’s not safe. And that’s funny, coming from Jason. He gets it. He understands the irony. It’s fucking hilarious. But Jason’s seen what Tony’s brain can do to him all on its own, and he doesn’t like the idea that Tony’s built an external manifestation, made the echo chamber louder.

                “Open the pod bay doors, HAL,” he says, slapping his hand against the glass.

                “Mr. Stark asked not to be disturbed,” JARVIS says, primly. He must understand the reference; he almost never misses them. God knows what his databases look like. God knows what information he’s amassed about the world, and the team, and each one of them.

                “HAL,” Jason says, and slams his hand against the glass, loud. “Open the pod bay doors.”

                “Alright,” Bucky says. He probably _doesn’t_ get the reference. He’s looking at Jason like he’s losing his damn mind. “You really wanna stand here and pick a fight with JARVIS?”

                “Kinda do,” Jason says, unapologetically.

                Bucky sighs. “You recognize he’s incorporeal?”

                “He’s got servers somewhere,” Jason says. He raises his voice, casts another look toward the camera. “And I’m sure they’re very flammable.”

                “I’m obligated to inform Mr. Stark about threats made against me,” JARVIS says.

                Jason considers telling JARVIS what they do to snitches back in Gotham. But, if JARVIS doesn’t already know, he could run a search of relevant news articles in less time than it would take Jason to explain.

                 “Great,” he says, instead. “And while you’re tattling, can you also tell him that locking us out of the clubhouse and pulling up the rope ladder is absolute bullshit? If he’s not out of there by dinner, I’m gonna smash these walls with a fucking hammer.”

                “I’ll be sure to pass your messages along,” JARVIS says.

                The shitty thing is there’s nothing Jason can _do_. He can’t barge in and drag Tony out.  He understands, objectively, that this low-level panic he’s feeling, this anxiety about not being able to immediately put eyes on Tony, has more to do with him than it does with Tony. And if Tony needs to be alone, then Jason should let him be alone.

                But he’s never locked them out before. Not once. Not unless he was building something for them and wanted it to be a surprise. And, even then, he’d almost always let at least _one_ of them in.

                He can’t imagine what the hell Tony’s building in there. He’s got no damn clue what Tony could want to hide.

                “Alright, J,” Jason says, taking a begrudging step away from the wall. “You watch him. Remind him about water, okay? If he gets dehydrated on your watch, I’m gonna dare Robin and Oracle to hack you fucking senseless. They owe me, J. They’ll do it.”

                “Okay,” Bucky says, wrapping a careful hand around Jason’s arm. “Let’s go. C’mon.”

 

 

 

                Jason’s just finishing his shower when JARVIS informs him that Maria Stark is on her way, with Pepper Potts and brunch. He heaves a sigh and towels most of the water out of his hair, and then he shoves the shower door open so he can yell at Bucky, “Do you fucking hear this? We’re eating _brunch_. We’re people who _brunch_ , Bucky. For Christ’s sake.”

                “Huh,” Bucky says. He’s shaving with a straight razor, which Tony bought him once as a joke, and he keeps around either because he likes it or because he likes Jason’s general reaction to it. He meets Jason’s gaze in the mirror. “Where I’m from,” he says, “nobody complained about extra food.”

                “Oh, fuck off, Buck. This isn’t the Great Depression anymore.” And Bucky’s not the only one who remembers what it was like to be hungry. The food isn’t the issue.

                Bucky watches him wrap a towel around his waist, eyes dragging slowly up Jason’s body and then stopping on Jason’s face. He raises his eyebrows. “What’re you worried about?”

                “My reputation,” Jason says, with as much dignity as he can muster. “Not very intimidating, is it, Bucky? ‘Oh, there’s Red Hood, knocking back a mimosa, eating crepes. What a killer.’”

                Bucky hums a noncommittal response and tips his head back. He draws the razor up his throat, and Jason follows the blade with his eyes. He only barely manages to keep himself from following it with his mouth, and he _knows_ Bucky is showing off, trying to distract or redirect him, but he can’t help that it works.

                The problem, he thinks, with being with the same pair of people for so long is that they start to learn all of your vulnerabilities.

                “What’re you worried about?” Bucky tries, again, as he leans over the sink and starts splashing cold water on his face.

                Jason scowls and reaches over to shove Bucky’s head under the spray of water. Bucky squawks but recovers quickly, and there’s a short-lived tussle that ends with Jason pinned against the wall and Bucky pressed against him, warm and solid, a weight that used to be familiar.

                “Jason,” Bucky says, a little warningly, a little coaxingly. His mouth is about three inches from Jason’s.

                “Maria’s coming for brunch,” Jason says, rolling his eyes at _brunch_ , “and Tony’s hiding in his workshop.”

                Bucky considers him for a moment and then tips his head to the side. “You know she doesn’t expect us to fix him overnight, right? You know that?”

                Jason shrugs. He stares over Bucky’s shoulder, and then shifts, squirming out of Bucky’s hold before Bucky can catch him, still slippery from the shower. “Yeah,” he says, “c’mon, Buck, I know that.”

                “He’ll get better,” Bucky says, as Jason ducks into the next room to find some appropriate clothes. “It’ll be awhile. She knows that. Jason, _everyone_ knows that.”

                “Sure,” Jason says. “Hey, you think she’s bringing crepes?”

                Bucky sighs. He gives Jason a long, serious look and then heads back into the bathroom, probably to find some aftershave. Or maybe because he’s figured out there’s still a bit of shaving cream, stuck up near his ear. Or maybe he’s just already tired of this conversation, sick of his turn in the stability role of the relationship.

                Jason knows Maria Stark. She’s sweet, as far as Starks go, but she’s got their same practicality. She won’t expect immediate results. She’s patient, when she needs to be. She won’t be _disappointed_ , and, if she is, she won’t blame Jason. Or Bucky.

                But it still feels like some kind of failure, and he’s not excited about telling her, when she gets here, that Tony’s been down in his workshop for hours and won’t come out.

 

 

 

                When they walk into the kitchen, Tony’s already seated at the bar, grinning gratefully at Pepper while she presses one of his ungodly green smoothies into his hand.

                “What the fuck,” Jason says, on reflex. Maria Stark looks up from where she’s unloading a series of takeout bags, and he winces. “Sorry, Maria.”

                “Brunch!” Tony tells him, brightly. “Thought I’d take a break.”

                “Are you sure you should be working, Tony?” Pepper says, frowning a little as she studies the small nicks and cuts on Tony’s hands. “The doctor said--”

                Tony waves a hand dismissively. “Light duty, Pep,” he says, reassuringly. “Still in the planning stages. Haven’t even touched a soldering iron, promise.”

                “Bucky, Jason,” Maria says, “would you mind setting the table?”

                Bucky moves immediately to help. Jason takes a moment to give Tony a sharp, questioning look, but the answering innocuous _who me?_ blink he gets back isn’t worth sticking around for. He goes to help Bucky set out plates and silverware and then to help Maria carry in enough food to feed twenty post-mission SHIELD agents.

                “Well, I was a bit enthusiastic,” Maria says, as they’re settling into their seats and practically craning their necks to see each other over the pile of food. “I thought it’d be nice. A bit of quiet a welcome back.”

                “Thanks, Mom,” Tony says, flashing another press conference smile before he shoves half a doughnut in his mouth.

                It’s good, Jason thinks. It’s good that Tony can fake this. It’s also incredibly worrying that he thinks he needs to. And if Tony can lie this easily to his mother, is it going to come just as naturally to him when he starts lying to Jason and Bucky? Is he already hiding something from them?

                What the hell is he building down in his workshop?

                Jason dissects a waffle with a bit more intensity than is entirely appropriate, and he tries not to get pissed off about how delicious the damn thing is, once he starts eating. Of course Maria Stark knows all the best brunch places in Malibu. She’s _Maria Stark_.

                “Speaking of a quiet welcome back,” Tony says, around the second half of that doughnut. “Pep, how’s that press conference coming along? You scheduled it yet? How about after this?”

                Pepper cuts her eyes toward Maria Stark. She is, technically, Tony’s assistant, but she was Maria’s assistant first, and she shows her loyalties, sometimes, in times of stress. Jason could worry about that, but, honestly, loyalty to Maria Stark is just loyalty to Tony Stark run through a moderator, and God knows Tony could use a little more moderation in his life.

                “Tony,” Maria says, gently, “we should talk about Obadiah.”

                “No need,” Tony says. There’s a flash of something on his face, but it disappears too quickly for Jason to pick it apart. It’s mostly hurt, but maybe anger, or maybe resignation. “Batman sent me the files. I know what Stane was doing. And I know he tried to have me killed, so we don’t need to go over any of that. I’ve got it all. Thanks.”

                “You’ve been talking to Batman?” Jason’s going to murder him. He _is_. He’s going to murder the old man in his bed and let Dick take up the cowl. At least Dick would wait twenty-four hours before he sent someone the files that laid out exactly how someone they loved had betrayed them.

                “Yeah,” Tony says, with a shrug. “Well, he already turned the files over to SHIELD. So when I was hacking into SHIELD this morning, he called me.” There’s a tense pause where no one says anything, and then Tony shrugs. “I’m still hacking SHIELD, obviously, since Batman’s not gonna win any prizes for sharing, but I think he gave me all of it.”

                “What do you want to do about it?” Bucky asks the question, which is kind of him. Jason didn’t want to say it in front of Maria or Pepper, who’s a sweetheart, but if Tony wants Stane dead, they’ll handle it for him.

                They’ll have to tell Phil about it this time, which might extend the timeline from _immediate_ to _after Phil convinces Fury,_ but they’ll handle it.

                Tony looks at both of them for a second and then scoops an entire stack of pancakes onto his plate. “I already gave my report on that,” he says. “I recommended SHIELD hand the case to the FBI. We’ll need an army of SI lawyers for the trial, Mom, and I know we’ve already got the PR crisis team, but this is gonna be a _mess_ , so we should shop around, find a secondary team.”

                “Trial?” Jason says, a little lost. “You want this to go to _trial_?”

                Tony looks up at him. Syrup accumulates on his pancakes while he locks eyes with Jason. When he finally drops his eyes, there’s syrup running nearly to the edges of his plate. He shrugs again, light and dismissive. “He committed several crimes, Jason. Most of which were federal. That’s not a SHIELD problem. That’s law enforcement.”

                “ _You_ are a SHIELD problem,” Jason says.

                “I’m not SHIELD property,” Tony says, loud and defensive and _angry_. Pepper drops her fork, which clatters against her plate, and Tony flinches and then settles, breathing out. “Sorry,” he says, “I meant I’m not employed by SHIELD. I’m not a SHIELD problem.”

                “I don’t understand,” Bucky says, diplomatically.

                “You want this guy to walk?” Jason says, a little less diplomatically. “A trial, Tony? Come on.”

                “What’s the alternative?” Tony says. “Are you gonna put him in Guantanamo? Are you gonna waterboard him, Jason?”

                There’s something weird on Tony’s face, in his voice. Something about _water_. Jason ignores the accusation, partly because he sure as hell has no grounds to defend himself against it, and narrows his eyes at Tony instead.

                “Why the hell do you have so much sympathy for him?” Jason says. “He didn’t have any for you.”

                Tony shakes his head, sharp and angry. He looks hurt all over again. “I am trying,” he says, voice tight, “to be a little bit better than Obadiah Stane. I’m trying to be _better_.”

                “Tony,” Maria says, “what do you mean? Better than _what_?”

                “You were perfect,” Jason says. “You _are_ perfect.”

                Tony laughs, and it’s the wrong laugh. It’s closer to the Joker’s laugh than Tony’s, and Jason tenses up, can’t help it, tightens his grip around his stupid butter knife and presses his knee into Bucky’s thigh, grounds himself as well as he can. He needs to _focus_. He needs to be here for this, not lost in some useless memory.

                Tony sets his fork down and clears his throat. He looks at Bucky, for a second, and then at Jason and then he looks at his mother. “We need to shut down the weapons manufacturing division of SI,” he says. “Effectively immediately, we need to stop it.”

                Jason blinks. Beside him, Bucky pulls back, frowns the way he does whenever something catches him completely by surprise.

                SI _is_ its weapons manufacturing division. It does other things, obviously. Tony’s building his way into every market he can, because his brain never chases just one idea at a time There’s the medical technology, the intelli-crops, the communications developments. But SI’s funding has always been heavily tied to military contracts.

                “Tony,” Pepper says, “the stock drop--”

                “40 points,” Tony says, with a nod. “Conservatively. I know--”

                “40 points at _minimum_ ,” Pepper says. “Tony, the weapons manufacturing division is the--”

                “They shot American soldiers with _my guns_ , Pep.” Tony gives a small, helpless gesture. “I watched them do it. I watched those kids get killed by the things I built to keep them safe. Obie sold my weapons to half the terrorists in the world, and, if it can happen once, if it can happen _this close_ for this long, then it can happen again. So we’re shutting it down. We’re shutting it down immediately.”

                Everyone at the table looks at Maria. Jason has never really been able to suss out which of them actually _runs_ SI. He thinks it’s technically Tony, but he has faint memories of Tony and Maria talking it out, one Thanksgiving, when Jason was napping on the couch with his head in Bucky’s lap, reflecting happily on his decision to eat half a damn pie. He remembers Maria saying, _We’re a weapons manufacturer, dear. No general wants to buy weapons from their widowed aunt. You’ll make a better face._

And, once or twice, Tony has shelved a project suddenly, purged all the data from his servers, and said something about Maria marking it as a source of concern. So Jason doesn’t know, really. He’s not sure the two of _them_ know.

                He really, really hopes that they don’t have to get lawyers involved to figure it out for them.

                Maria sets her cutlery down and leans toward Tony, studying him quietly for several seconds. And then she nods, slow and considered. “Yes,” she says. “Alright. Pepper, would you schedule a press conference for tomorrow morning? I’ll announce it there. And see how many of the board members you can get together for a meeting tonight. Six, maybe?”

                “What?” Tony’s shoulders had slumped with relief at Maria’s agreement, but they tense up all over again. “I’ll do it. Mom, what the hell? _I’ll_ do it. The press is gonna be a nightmare about this. You’ll get so much shit. Do you have any idea what they’ll _say_ about you? It’s my call. I’ll make it.”

                Maria blinks at him and then takes a measured sip of her orange juice. “It’s fine, Tony. I’m still acting CEO. I’ll make the announcement.”

                “No,” Tony says. He leans forward, half out of his chair. “Mom, c’mon. They’re gonna say--”

                “What will they say?” Maria’s voice slices through Tony’s. She doesn’t interrupt people often. She’s too well-mannered for it. Jason almost wishes Natasha were here to see this. He thinks even _Natasha_ could learn from watching this play out.

                “What will they say, Tony?” Maria’s voice is smooth and even, perfectly composed, but there’s an unusual undertone, a steely kind of calm. “Will they say it’s because I’m a woman? That I don’t have the stomach for war? That I’m fine profiting from blood money, as long as it’s not my son’s blood?”

                “Well,” Tony says, floundering, “yeah, Mom. It’ll be something like that. Just—it’s gonna be _worse_. It’ll be constant, on every network, everywhere. It’s not gonna be one news cycle, Mom. It’ll be _days_ of this.”

                Maria gives him a soft look and a small smile. Jason thinks about the news that used to break, about Howard and about Tony, a decade or so ago. He thinks, compared to that, a little bit of business reporting won’t phase her much, even if it’s going to get unfairly personal.

                “Whatever they say about me,” Maria says, “will be much kinder than the things they would say about you. I’ll just be a silly woman who almost lost her son and then lost her nerve. They’d call you a coward for this, Tony. They’d say you were having a nervous breakdown. They won’t understand.”

                Tony settles back into his chair. He stares down at his pancakes for a moment, swallows, and then looks back up at her. “I don’t need you to protect me,” he says. “Jesus, Mom. I’m a grown man.”

                “And I’m a mother who spent the last month waiting to hear I needed to plan a funeral.” She sets her juice down and reaches across the table, lays a gentle hand on Tony’s face. “You missed my birthday,” she tells him, with another one of her inscrutable half-smiles. “So allow me the indulgence of protecting you at least one more time.”

                Jason is frozen in place, watching this. Bucky’s got a hand on his knee under the table, anchoring him. Jason feels tugged in every single direction at once.

                He’s never been good at moments like this. He feels like he’s witnessing something holy, something not meant for him. He keeps thinking about his own mother, the real one, that first awful death, and he doesn’t know which one of them he wants to protect. He wants to yell _be fucking careful_ , and he doesn’t know which one he’s trying to warn.

                God help him, if Tony doesn’t let her do this, there is a real, legitimate risk that he will flip this fucking table.

                “Okay,” Tony says, and Jason tries to keep his heavy breath of relief reasonably quiet, because this isn’t even his crisis. “Okay,” Tony says, again.

                Pepper gets her phone, starts coordinating a dozen things at once, one-handed, holding her coffee in the other. Maria smiles, sweet and proud, as she leans back into her chair. Bucky tightens his grip on Jason’s leg and then releases, gives him one last comforting pat before he reaches for his fork.

                Tony nods slowly, eyes fluttering briefly shut. “Alright,” he says, decisively, “so that’s done. That’s decided.”

                “Great,” Jason says, standing up. He can’t help it. There’s not a power on this earth that could keep him in his seat. Not after that. “Super, wonderful,” he adds, when the others stare at him. “This is brunch, right? Who wants mimosas? I’m getting the champagne.”

 

 

 

                Later, Jason is helping Maria pack up the leftovers while Pepper, Bucky, and Tony keep working on the draft of the official statement. All five of them had drawn up an outline together, but Jason had been dismissed from editing duty after Pepper deemed his vocabulary “clear and practical, but unnecessarily coarse.” He’d elected to clean up, instead, and Maria had volunteered to help him, because Maria was the kind of woman who preferred to do her interrogations while her victims were elbow-deep in dish soap suds and therefore utterly helpless.

                “It’s just a question, Jason,” Maria tells him, gently, when he blinks owlishly at her. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

                “I mean,” Jason says. He swallows and repeats the question in his head: _How’s he doing?_ “He’s. You know. He’s working?”

                “Yes, I heard him say that.” She gives Jason a considering look and then grabs the last of the champagne and mixes up another mimosa, pops a straw in the glass and slides it within sipping distance. Jason stares at it with horror.

                Here he is, post-brunch, doing dishes, and now she expects him to sip a mimosa through a straw. He’s never had much dignity, but he does have _some_.

                Maria gives him a focused look of calculation that Jason’s seen Tony give malfunctioning robots. “How are _you_ doing?”

                Well. Hell, he _is_ on leave.

                He leans over, drains half the mimosa, and then scrubs determinedly at an especially syrupy plate. “I’m fine,” he says. “Nobody kidnapped me, Maria.”

                Maria sighs, and Jason grimaces, hates to disappoint her. “I spent years of my life pretending to be fine,” she tells him. “And, looking back, nobody was helped, and nobody was fooled, and the only people who benefitted from it were the people who were hurting me to begin with. So. Let’s try this again. How are you, Jason?”

Jason clears his throat. With the water running, he can’t hear the voices of the other three, working in the dining room, and he doubts they can hear him.

                “I didn’t save him,” he says, finally, so quiet that Maria has to lean close to hear him. “I save all these people, right? It’s what I do. I save all these people I’ve never even met, and then they take Tony, and I fucking failed him. I didn’t save him.”

                Maria makes a soft, sympathetic noise. She reaches over, hooking a finger under his chin and lifts his head so she can look him right in the eyes. Jason’s caught between her and the sink, hands still submerged in the water, and he’d drench her, probably, if he backpedaled. So, he holds still.

                “Jason,” she says, “I know my son. I know where he was headed, before the two of you came along. You and Bucky, you’ve saved him for years.”

                Jason exhales. “It’s not the same,” he says, starting to pull away.

                “ _Jason_ ,” she says, a little sharper, and her hand tightens on his chin, keeps him in place. “Sweetheart,” she says, quieter, and Jason damn near shatters the glass he’s holding. “You save him every day he sees you. All he needs from you is for you to be here with him. No one blames you for what happened. Just promise me you won’t leave him.”

                “I won’t,” Jason says, immediately. “Hell, Maria, of course not. I’m here until—I’m here forever. You know that.”

                He’s here until he’s not welcome. He’s here until it’s over. He’s here until Tony tells him to get out.

                And if that never happens, then he’s here forever.

                Maria smiles at him, soft and approving, and Jason has the ludicrous urge to pack this memory up, fold it up small and keep it tucked away, take it out for emergencies. “Good,” she says. “That’s good, Jason.”

                She leaves after that. Presses a quick kiss to his temple, puts the leftovers in the nearest fridge, and disappears back into the dining room to finalize the statement.

                Jason breathes out hard when she leaves, curls his hands around the edge of the sink and bears down until it creaks in protest. Something shifts inside of him, desperate and kicking, and he swallows everything back into place.

                _Promise me you won’t leave him,_ he thinks, and then: _I’m here forever_.

                But he hears Tony’s voice, _I thought you weren’t coming_. And he thinks about Tony, down in his workshop, building something in secret, locking both of them out.

                They’re good for Tony, him and Bucky. He knows that. Maria knows it. Tony used to know it, too. But maybe he’s realized, after a month in a cave, after he had to fight his own damn way to safety, that they aren’t good _enough_.


	10. Chapter 10

                Tony keeps working. Every day. He comes to bed at some ungodly hour of the morning and then disappears after breakfast. He’s always worked too much. Jason and Bucky used to unite against that. They’d concoct plans, dream up elaborate schemes, distract him, exhaust him, sabotage alarm clocks and kidnap coffeepots. But Bucky and Jason are divided on this one.

                “He needs to rest,” Jason says, pacing outside the workshop again.

                Bucky’s leaning back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, eyebrows arched. “Have you been doing a lot of resting?” He asks, innocuous and calm, because he’s an absolute asshole sometimes. “Maybe taking some naps when I’m not looking?”

                “Alright,” Jason says, rolling his eyes, “I was not held in a _cave_ for a month. I don’t have a fucking freshly-invented, previously-impossible _device_ stuck in my chest. I’m not--”

                “You’re not sleeping,” Bucky says. “If Coulson compared the time you spent training to the time you spent asleep, he’d--”

                “He’s not here, is he?” Which isn’t what Jason means. Which isn’t what he’s _worried_ about. He doesn’t need Coulson to swoop in and fix this. “Bucky, I’m _fine_. So I’m a little keyed up. So what? I’ve had worse. Tony hasn’t. He needs to get better, not spend every fucking night in his lab.”

                “Maybe this is how Tony gets better,” Bucky says, placidly. “Maybe he needs to do this.”

                “Do _what_ , Buck? We don’t even know what the hell he’s doing in there. He says he wants to stop making weapons, but then he locks himself in his lab for sixteen hours a day? What’s he _doing_?”

                “We’ll know when he wants us to know.” Bucky’s frowning at Jason, watching him a bit too closely. Jason doesn’t fucking appreciate it. He wishes Bucky were half as concerned about Tony as he is about Jason’s sleep schedule. “Don’t you trust him?”

                “With himself?” Jason asks, incredulous. “Of fucking course I don’t, Buck. Jesus Christ, have you been paying attention? _Ever_? At all? Tony Stark can do every damn thing in the world except look after himself.”

                Bucky considers him. “You want to fight about this?” His tone is more curious than confrontational. He sounds like he’s doing Jason a favor. “Will that help you calm down?”

                “Oh, get fucked,” Jason says, rolling his eyes.

                Bucky raises his eyebrows, curls up one corner of his mouth. “Will _that_ help you calm down?”

                Jason goes still for a second, caught awkwardly between one step and another. He blinks, and Bucky’s smirk widens, and Jason circles back his way, just to call his bluff. _If_ he’s bluffing. It’s hard to tell with Bucky, sometimes. Mostly because they share the same bad habit of changing a bluff to a dare the second someone pushes back.

                “This isn’t good for him,” Jason says, when he gets close. “C’mon, Buck. You know that. He’s in there with his damn machines, and he should be out here with us.”

                “You love his machines,” Bucky counters. He’s relaxed, even when Jason crowds him.

                “Sure,” Jason says, because he does. He loves the things that come out of Tony’s brain. Most of the time.

                Bucky gives him a small, sympathetic smile. “Never been jealous of them before?”

                “Don’t try to get in my head right now, Buck,” Jason says. “It’s not a fun place to be.”

                Bucky sighs. His hands settle on Jason’s hips and then pull him in, so they’re pressed tight together. Jason doesn’t lean either way, lets Bucky move him how he wants. There’s some of that anger still lingering, festering under the surface, never fully burned away. But it’s hard to say no to Bucky, hard to say no to anything that means he’s not standing on his own.

                “I’m sorry,” Bucky says, leaning his forehead against Jason’s. “I’m sorry I left. I didn’t know how to stay.”

                “Real fucking easy, Buck,” Jason says. “You just stay. I’ve been doing it every Goddamn day.”

                “I wasn’t ready for it to be Tony,” he says, after a moment. “I was ready for you. Or Clint, Natasha. Phil, even. I wasn’t ready for him.”

                “No one was, asshole,” Jason says. “ _I_ wasn’t.”

                Bucky grimaces. His eyes go distant and then snap back to Jason’s face, and Jason’s familiar with that wavering, knows what it means. He knows what it looks like, when Bucky’s trying to hold himself in the present.

                “When they took me,” he says, “that first time. With Zola, the experiments. I wasn’t much younger than Tony. I couldn’t think about that, about things like that happening to him, and stay something that could’ve helped you. When things get bad, I’m just a weapon again. That’s all. I could tell you hated it. So I left.”

                Jason gets a flash of Bucky, those first seventy-two hours after they got the call that Tony was gone. He was fucking useless. He’d gone straight to _ready to comply_. He’d sat on their couch with no damn lights on, hunched over, waiting for orders, and Jason had to tell him to eat.

                They’d slept next to each other, not touching, not speaking. Coiled springs, waiting for some outside force to make them useful, to make them anything at all.

                It would’ve been hell, if Bucky stayed. It would’ve been absolute hell, like letting a drowning man catch one gasp of air before shoving him back underwater.

                Jason swallows, closes his eyes. Breathes out. “You idiot,” he says. “I’d rather hate you than miss you.”

                Bucky makes a quiet, strangled noise. “I’m sorry,” he says, again.

                A second later, Bucky kisses him, mouth moving slowly and carefully over Jason’s, and Jason is still for one heartbeat, then another, but the moment Bucky starts pulling away, he’s all over him. Which is just the story of their whole damn lives, honestly, so he’s not sure why Bucky seems so surprised, why he makes that shocked noise in the back of his throat, when Jason shoves him up against the wall and licks into his mouth.

                There’s too much built up between them. It was always going to be a mess, when it boiled over. Jason thinks, when he’s thinking, that this is probably the best way it could have gone.

                It’s easy not to think, though, with Bucky’s mouth on him, hands on him. And that’s its own kind of mercy, because Jason’s mind has been humming for weeks, spitting out thoughts and theories and endless, pessimistic predictions. He’s been alone, in his head, and his head hasn’t been the most hospitable place.

                Bucky’s teeth catch Jason’s lower lip, a quick, gentle hint of pressure, more a reminder than a promise. And after that, Jason has to bite back, can’t help it. It’s hard to leave marks on Bucky, since he heals so damn fast. His skin is a canvas that resets to blank overnight, and it would be a damn Sisyphean task, maybe, except for how much Jason enjoys it.

                There’s a threshold of manhandling that Bucky will usually tolerate. And it’s fun, sometimes, to trip over that threshold, to get Bucky to push back. But he won’t get any of that right now, because Bucky always overcompensates with his apologies, gives up whatever’s asked. 

                So when Jason presses him against the wall, Bucky just relaxes into it, goes easy and compliant, lets Jason pin him. And when Jason works his mouth down Bucky’s neck, scraps his teeth against soft skin and starts leaving the kind of mark that should have some staying power, Bucky just tips his head back and makes quiet, encouraging sounds. Curls his hands in Jason’s shirt and then shoves it up, out of the way, like maybe they’re going to fool around, right here, right outside Tony’s workshop.

                Well, why the hell not? What the hell else are they going to do?

                “Hey,” Tony says, suddenly. “Hey, I need—woah.”

                Bucky tenses up, rolls his head to look Tony’s direction, but Jason’s _busy_ , damn it. Jason can taste the first hints of sweat on Bucky’s skin, can feel the warmth of his hand, sliding across the bare skin of his stomach, and he doesn’t want to give this up yet.

                Everything’s so fucking complicated. The second he opens his eyes, takes his mouth off Bucky’s neck, he’s going to have to deal with all of it, all over again.

                “You two busy?” Tony sounds amused, maybe a little intrigued, but his syllables are too sharp, stitched too tightly together. Jason recognizes the tone. Physically, Tony’s here, but his brain is buried in some schematic.

                “Kinda,” Bucky says. His voice is the slightest bit breathy. The low burr of his voice rumbles against Jason’s lips, and Jason scrapes his teeth against the rising bruise, just to feel the way Bucky’s chest hitches against his own. “Need something?”

                “Need a hand,” Tony says, musingly. “Kinda looks like the two of you might, too.”

                Jason blinks, draws back. He casts a dubious look at the workshop over Tony’s shoulder. “You’re accepting tourists now?”

                “Don’t be snide,” Tony tells him. “It’s unattractive.”

                “Oh, yeah,” Bucky says, with a flash of a flatteringly skeptical eyebrow, “he’s real unattractive right now.”

                “Glad to see the two of you are getting along better.” Tony looks between them and then hooks his thumb over his shoulder. “One of you wanna come hold my heart in your hands? Or is this a bad time?”

                Jason straightens up, stepping away from Bucky and tugging his rumpled shirt back down. He shares a brief, uneasy look with Bucky. “What the fuck,” he says, “does _that_ mean?”

 

 

 

                Half an hour later, Jason’s sitting on the roof, legs kicked over the edge, head in his hands. He’s laughing, and he thinks maybe he’s going to throw up. “Hey,” he says, nudging Bucky’s ankle with his foot. “Remember that time we sent our boyfriend into cardiac arrest?”

                “Yeah,” Bucky says. He’s squinting at the sunset. His hands are neatly folded across his lap. They aren’t even shaking anymore. “Trying to repress it, though.”

                “Jesus Christ,” Jason says. “Jesus _Christ_.”

                Bucky wraps his arm around Jason’s shoulder and pulls him against him. “It’s alright,” he says. “It’s over. He’s fine now.”

                “I’m gonna fucking murder him,” Jason tells him, earnestly. “Next time he actually sleeps. I’m just gonna take one of those pillows, and I’m gonna fucking--- I’m gonna kill him.”

                “Sure,” Bucky says, “seems fair.” He leans over, presses a kiss to Jason’s temple. “You need any help hiding the body, let me know.”

                “Why would I bother to hide the body?” Jason says. “He practically fucking _killed himself_ five minutes ago. He has shrapnel in his heart, and, instead of seeing a Goddamn surgeon about that, he just built a better arc reactor. ‘Fuck doctors, this is science.’ Bucky, he said ‘ _fuck doctors,_ this is _science_.’”

                “He’s reestablishing control.” Bucky sounds resigned. He also sounds pissed off. Jason can commiserate with both.

                “He’s losing his fucking mind.”

                Bucky shrugs. “It can look like the same thing.”

                “I pulled his _heart_ out,” Jason says. “I pulled his heart out, and he started dying. Fucking Christ, Bucky, he didn’t even warn me.”

                “And then,” Bucky says, “you put it back in. It’s fine, Jason. It’s done.”

                It’s not fine, and it isn’t done. Jason figures they both know that. It’s nice that Bucky’s trying to make him feel better. It’s nice that, afterwards, when Jason wiped the plasmic discharge on Tony’s discarded shirt and threw it at Tony’s stupid, pale face, when Jason yelled at Tony for being _fucking reckless_ in a way that reminded him, viscerally and unpleasantly, of Bruce Wayne, when Jason, who’d been lobbying for days to get into the workshop, stormed right the hell _out_ of the lab without bothering to look around, Bucky had gone right after him.

                “What the fuck is he doing?” Jason wishes he’d had better control. He wishes he’d looked around more, while he was in the workshop. “What the hell is he going to do _next_?”

                “I don’t know,” Bucky says.

                It shouldn’t be comforting. It isn’t, really. It’s just nice not to be alone.

 

 

 

                Two days after announcing the shutdown of SI’s weapons manufacturing division, Maria Stark hand-delivers the invitation to the Firefighters’ Family Fund benefit. Her chin is up and her smile is flawless, and Jason hasn’t asked Drake or Babs to crash any of the news sites that have said especially shitty things about her, but he might have, if he were on better terms with the Bats right now.

                But, whatever their feelings about Jason, the Bats seem to maintain some level of loyalty to Maria. Twenty-four hours after Maria’s press conference, Bruce held his own. He gave a speech full of encouragement and praise, which led Jason to believe, a bit uncharitably, that Alfred wrote it for him.

                Jason refuses to feel grateful. But when he catches Bucky on the phone later, talking to someone who sounds like Grayson, he doesn’t throw the phone against the wall.

                Tony hasn’t said anything about Maria, or Bruce, or the press, but Jason knows him well enough to guess that he’s been watching the news coverage obsessively down in his workshop.

                This charity gala will be Maria’s first major public appearance since the announcement. And it’ll be Tony’s first since his return from Afghanistan.

                “Oh, thrilling,” Tony says, staring at the invitation. “Firefighters.”

                “You don’t have to go,” Maria tells him. “None of you do. I’ll be going, and so will Pepper, but the three of you can stay home if you’d like.”

                “No,” Tony says, with a brilliant smile. “Wouldn’t miss it. Nobody parties like the nonprofit crowd. It’s all that guilt.”

               

 

 

                On the night of the gala, Jason’s letting Bucky tie his tie because that’s the sort of weird shit Bucky’s into when JARVIS hijacks the speaker in their room. “Agent Barnes,” he says, sounding urgent, “Agent Todd, your presence is needed at the pool.”

                There’s a second of lag time, and then Bucky and Jason are rushing through the house, barely pausing to push the glass doors open before skidding out onto the second floor patio overlooking the pool.

                Tony’s at the bottom of the pool. He’s curled up, fetal position, and he isn’t moving.

                Jason jerks forward, doesn’t think about it until he’s midair, leaping off the balcony railing and then spinning, twisting, diving into the water fast enough that he damn near smashes into the bottom of the pool before the water slows him down.

                When he grabs Tony, he flails, kicking and scrambling, and, for one beautiful second, Jason’s whole mind cracks open with relief and gratitude. Because Tony’s _fine_. Tony’s alive.

                By the time he drags Tony to the surface, he’s so angry he damn near shoves him back under the water. “What the _fuck_ ,” he snarls and tosses him up, to Bucky, who’s crouched beside the pool. “Are you out of your _fucking mind_?”

                “Don’t ‘what the fuck’ at me, damn it,” Tony says, gasping. His eyes are red, and he spits up water, scowling. “You fucking _tackled me_.”

                “Yeah, because I thought you were _dead_.” Jason gestures at the pool. “What the fuck were you _doing_?”

                Tony blinks, and, for a second, he looks evasive as hell. “Relaxing,” he says. “What the hell do you think people do in pools?”

                “Are you alright?” Bucky says, hooking a hand under Tony’s chin, moving his fingers to get a read on Tony’s pulse.

                “I’m _fine_ ,” Tony says, pushing Bucky’s hand away. He stands up, wipes the water off his face. He’s trembling. Jason can see it from here.

                He thinks about the way Tony was curled up, the way he’d locked his arms around his legs. Like he was hugging himself. Or holding himself in place. Holding himself down.

                Jason stares at him for a few moments longer, but Tony just jerks his chin up, eyes narrowed, face closed off.

                “Okay,” Jason says and begins the arduous, awkward process of hauling himself out of the pool in drenched formalwear. After a second, Bucky reaches over, grabs him by the suit jacket, and drags him out.

                “Fine, Tony,” Jason says, as he climbs to his feet. “Keep your fucking secrets. I hope you and your secrets are real fucking happy together. I hope your bullshit, fucked-up drowning practice gives you years of bliss. Okay? Fuck you.”

                “Hey,” Bucky says. It comes out rote, like even Bucky’s getting sick of this same scenario playing out. Jason pushing, and Tony sidestepping, and Bucky, trying to keep the peace.

                “I have a right to swim,” Tony tells him, finger combing his hair out of his face. “I can swim without a fucking life jacket, Jason. I’m an adult. I can do--”

                “Yeah,” Jason says, wringing out his dripping shirt. “You can do whatever the fuck you want, Tony. That’s been made real fucking clear. I get it. We all fucking get it.”

                “I was swimming. It’s _fine_ ,” Tony yells, and it’s sharp enough that it gets Jason’s attention. It gets Bucky’s attention, too, and the two of them share a quick, assessing look.

                “Everything’s fine,” Tony says. It sounds like something he tells himself a lot.

                Jason thinks about walking away from this. He thinks, if he were better, if he were kinder and smarter and more patient, he’d just nod along, like Bucky does. But he’s sick of not knowing where the hell they’re going, what they’re doing. He’s tired of waking up with Tony curled around him, shaking from another nightmare, and then looking up after breakfast to realize Tony’s disappeared again.

                He’s standing here, in a ruined tuxedo, because Tony was holding himself underwater. And he doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t know what it means, and he’s fucking sick of Tony redirecting everything.

                Jason sighs, runs a hand through his hair. Looks to Bucky for something, validation or solidarity, and sees him looking back, steady, patient. Worried.

                “If you don’t want to talk to us,” Jason says, to Tony, “that’s fucking fine. You don’t have to. You don’t have to do a Goddamn thing you don’t want to. But don’t fucking lie to us.”

                “I was swimming,” Tony repeats, a little dully. He takes a breath, deep and almost desperate. Like he’s checking to make sure he still can. Like oxygen is something he thinks he has to worry about.

                Jason shakes his head. He tugs at his tie, gives himself some room to breathe.

                “Okay,” he says. “Sure, Tony. Whatever you say.”

 

 

 

                Jason has to shower and get dressed all over again, dig out another pair of stupid shoes. He’s half an hour late, and Tony, JARVIS reports, has already left.

                “Do you still want to go?” Bucky looks uneasy. Jason doesn’t blame him for that. They haven’t left Tony alone since they got him back. But he’s got his hands in his pockets, jaw set like he’d stay, if Jason asked him to.

                “Fuck it,” Jason says. Tony’s avoiding them, hiding from them, and now he’s lying right to their faces. And he was right, earlier. It’s his right to do it. He’s earned it. But Jason’s still taking it a little personally. “Let’s go,” he says. “Maria wants us there.”

 

 

 

                The party isn’t exactly a nightmare, at first. Jason’s phone starts buzzing with news updates about Tony before they even get out of the driveway. He looks good in the pictures, handsome and happy and charming, chatting casually to reporters like he spent a long weekend in Fiji instead of a month in captivity.

                When Jason and Bucky arrive, they breeze past the photographers without much reaction. Their cover is that they’re friends of Tony’s, sometimes his bodyguards, and SHIELD and Tony carefully monitor and remove any posts that threaten to trip them over into the realm of public recognition.

                Maria is inside, charming and resplendent, smiling at all the reporters who’ve been routinely trashing her over SI’s new strategic plan. Pepper’s there, too, in a dress that dips so damn low in the back that, by the time Jason’s halfway across the room, he’s already watched Tony chase off two separate creeps who hear _personal assistant_ , translate it to _secretary_ , and then extrapolate that to _for hire_.

                Tony, of course, is so fucking beautiful that it hurts to look at him, especially because Jason can tell in a single glance that he’s absolutely miserable.

                Miserable, and eagerly working through what is, hopefully, his first whiskey of the night.

                “Hey,” Tony says, flashing a dazzling, insincere smile, “glad you could make it.”

                “Go to hell, sweetheart,” Jason says, when they’re exchanging the kind of quick, back-slapping hug that fits male friends. “You should’ve waited.”

                “Places to be,” Tony says, saluting him with his whiskey.

                “This place is full of sharks,” Bucky says, eyes skipping from one hungry face to the other. He doesn’t always hate these parties, but, when he’s not in the mood for them, he can be something of a disaster.

                “Bucky,” Pepper says, with a cheerful smile and a mildly harassed look on her face. “Dance with me?”

                Bucky blinks at her and then slides his eyes over her shoulder, makes one hell of a face at a man behind her, who looks like a lost, handsy dentist. “Sure,” he says, taking her hand. He sets off for the dance floor, and Jason would feel bad for him, but he knows, deep down, that Bucky’s the kind of throwback degenerate who likes dancing, and it’s not something he gets to do with either one of them very often.

                “I’ll take next shift,” Natasha says, suddenly appearing next to them in something black and low-cut. Jason’s thrilled to see her for a number of reasons, but he’s hoping that one of her more endearing traits – her willingness and ability to terrify pushy businessmen with a single look – will make an appearance in the near future.

                “Hey,” Jason says. “Missed you.” It’s true. He always does. He misses all of them, when they’re on missions.

                And when he’s on a mission with them, he misses Tony.

                Everything was a hell of a lot less complicated when he worked alone. But he wouldn’t ever want to go back to that life. Of course, there’s always the chance that won’t be his choice.  

                “Remember that.” Natasha takes a neat sip of champagne. “Remember you missed us.”

                “Us?” Jason asks, and then the rest of her implication settles in. “Wait, what the hell? What is this?”

                Natasha gives him a brief, enigmatic smile, and then looks over his shoulder, eyes focusing on something behind him. Jason turns to look, braced for something awful, and finds his gaze settling over something even worse.

                Across the room, Tim Drake and Clint Barton are standing together. Entirely too close together.

                “Holy shit,” Jason says, wonderingly. “Drake’s letting him see his _face_ now?”

                “Things are going well,” Natasha says, approvingly. “They’re very cute.”

                “Give me your purse,” Jason says. “I’m gonna throw up.”

                “Oh, shit,” Tony says. He sounds thrilled. “ _Look_ at them.”

                Tim laughs at something Clint says, ducking his head and rubbing at his mouth, smothering his laughter and giving Clint a kind of sidelong, begrudgingly amused look that Jason’s never once seen on his face. For his part, Clint’s grinning like he just managed to single-handedly end world hunger and win the World Series.

                “Purse,” Jason says, urgently. “Purse, Nat, or I’m gonna puke on my shoes.”

                “I know,” Natasha says, sounding pleased. “Let’s go say hi.”

                “No,” Jason says. “Absolutely fucking not.” He continues his objections even as Natasha hooks an arm through his and leads him across the room. Tony comes with them, gamely knocking back his whiskey, but they lose him halfway over, when Maria curls a hand around his elbow and tugs him toward a group of beaming women. Jason tries to doubleback for him, but Natasha’s hand tightens with enough force that he has to choose between making a scene and getting dragged to Drake.

                He chooses to go, mainly because he doesn’t want to give Tim the satisfaction of seeing him lose a fight to Natasha while she’s wearing four inch heels.

                “Oh,” Tim says, when Jason gets close. His face closes off, goes that patented Batman blank they’ve all learned. “Todd,” he greets, polite but a little wary.

                “Tim,” Jason says. “Barton,” he adds, nodding at Clint, who’s staring at him like he’s a muddy puppy who’s just trotted into a wedding reception.

                “Jay,” Clint says, with an apologetic grimace, “if you’re an asshole to my date, we’re gonna have a fight about it.”

                Jason blinks at him. He struggles not to be charmed by that, and, when that fails, he fights hard to keep the approving smile off his face.

                “Where’s Tony?” Tim asks, craning his neck to find him. He visibly relaxes when he sees him next to his mother. “I’m glad he’s back,” he says. “How is he?”

                They’re friends, kind of. Whenever Tony finds an excuse to go to Gotham, he ends up down in the Batcave with Tim, heads together, muttering over their computers or gadgets. It’s the only reason Jason doesn’t throw his drink right in Tim’s face.

                “He’s getting better,” Jason says, instead. Diplomacy, he’s learning, has its uses. Namely, it means he doesn’t have to fight Clint Barton in an alley out back.

                “Good,” Tim says. He gives Jason a weird look, weighted with something he seems disinclined to say.

                Jason thinks about what sent them after Stane. He thinks about Clint, who’s clever and observant and intuitive, but isn’t a Bat, doesn’t have the kind of instinctive evasiveness that runs marrow deep in them.

                He thinks, if Tim Drake didn’t want Clint to know that he and Oracle were looking into Obadiah Stane, then Clint wouldn’t have known. And if Tim _did_ want Clint to know, he’d have to let him find out in a way that gave him plausible deniability.

                Jason considers Tim, who stares back at him. “You ever get tired of it?” He asks, more friendly than he could be. “You ever think maybe B calls things wrong?”

                Tim blinks at him. That poker face holds, but his grip around his glass is a little tighter than it needs to be. “No,” he says. His eyes cut away. He’s lying. “I never think that.”

                “My glass is empty,” Natasha announces. She passes her empty glass to Tim with a smile. “Clint’s is, too,” she adds, taking Clint’s half-full glass and draining it before handing it over. “Would you mind?”

                “Of course,” Tim says, graceful in the face of this dismissal, and turns to leave.

                Clint makes a quiet, aggrieved sound and reaches out, his fingertips catching the very ends of Tim’s fingers. Tim swings around immediately, eyes widening with a question, and he’s off-balance when Clint kisses him, nearly drops Natasha’s empty wine glass before he gets his feet under him.

                “Holy fucking shit,” Jason announces, when Tim recovers and heads off toward the bar. “He’s fucking twitterpated. You nearly bowled him over.”

                “I did not,” Clint says, but he looks smug anyway.

                “You ever seen a Bat lose their balance?” Jason shakes his head. “It doesn’t happen.”

                “We’re headed to Afghanistan in the morning,” Natasha tells him. “Ten Rings clean-up. Coulson’s overcompensating a bit.”

                Jason makes a face. “He can’t wait til we get back?”

                “There will be plenty left when you get back,” Natasha tells him, soothingly.

                “We’ll just take out the real scary ones,” Clint says. He’s been watching Tim, and, when his face clouds up, Jason follows his eyes to see Tony’s joined him at the bar.

                “Mind on your mission, Barton,” Jason says. “Don’t let Drake keep you up all night.”

                “Speaking of,” Natasha says, “how’s Tony?”

                “No idea,” Jason says, with a shrug. “Pretty sure he doesn’t want us to know.”

                “Huh.” Clint doesn’t sound like he’s listening. His eyes are narrowing over Jason’s shoulder. Jason glances back to see a blonde woman, standing between Tim and Tony, saying something that’s pulled Tim’s society face firmly into place.

                Jason looks to Natasha, who’s frowning. Alarm bells, faint but insistent, start ringing in his head.

                “Where’s Tony going?” Clint asks. When Jason glances back toward the bar, only the blonde is left.

                A second later, Tim materializes among them with zero manners and no Goddamn warning. “Todd,” he says, “go home. There’s been an attack, in Afghanistan. SI weapons are involved. All the major news networks are running it.”

                “Shit,” Jason says. He nods, looks around for Bucky. “Thanks, Drake.” Which is really weird, coming out of his mouth, but feels heartfelt anyway. “Clint, Nat, be careful.”

                “Go home,” Natasha says, setting a hand briefly on Jason’s shoulder. “Make sure he’s alright.”

 

 

 

                Tony is not alright. Tony is locked in his workshop, and even JARVIS seems to think this is a bad idea. “I’m sorry,” he’s saying, again. “I cannot open the doors.”

                “JARVIS,” Jason says, “open the Goddamn doors.”

                “Unfortunately,” JARVIS says, “the workshop has been locked down.”

                “Right,” Bucky says, with a long, slow nod. And then, in a heartbeat, before Jason can do anything other than duck out of the way, he slams a single, hard punch with his metal hand straight into the wall. The walls cracks and splinters but doesn’t break.

                The second one deepens the cracks, and the third one shatters a panel entirely.

                “Holy shit,” Jason says. “Holy shit, I love you.”

                He scrambles into the workshop with Bucky right behind him, and he’s a solid three or four yards into the room before he realizes what he’s seeing.

                He thinks it’s another one of Tony’s robots, at first. And then the man-sized figure shifts, turns to look, and Jason realizes it’s Tony. It’s Tony fucking Stark, standing in a suit of shining red and gold armor, and Jason gets one short look at the dark, grim look on Tony’s face before the faceplate slides down, and then he’s just looking at a mask.

                “Tony,” Bucky says. “What are you---”

                “Oh, like _hell_ ,” Jason says. His feet start running before his brain fully catches up. It’s like that, sometimes. He was never a proper detective. He’s more intuition than logic. “Don’t you _fucking dare_.”

                It’s too late. Tony’s standing there, in his suit, and then he shifts, and he’s _flying_. He flies up and away, far faster than Jason can run, and Jason jumps, arms outstretched, but Tony’s halfway up the driveway in seconds, and Jason doesn’t even get close. He’s gone before Jason’s feet touch back down.

                “I’m gonna kill him,” Jason says, when they’re standing there, staring after him.

                This is what Tony was doing. This is what he was building. This is what he was hiding.

                “Yeah,” Bucky says. He sounds worried, a little shellshocked. There’s something else in his voice, though. Something Jason understands, because it’s kicking in his chest, too.

                “I’m gonna fucking kill him,” Jason says again.

                “Only option,” Bucky agrees.

                Jason groans, rubs a hand across his face, and thinks about the way Tony had looked, encased in armor, surrounded by metal, armed with the physical manifestation of all that genius in his head.

                “ _Fuck_ , that was hot, though.” He can’t help it. It _was_. It was beautiful and hot and scary hell, because it was _Tony_ , suited up like some kind of soldier.

                “Yeah,” Bucky says. He sounds exactly as conflicted as Jason feels.

                “As soon as he gets back here,” Jason says, determinedly, “I’m gonna fuck him til he can’t do addition. And _then_ , after that, I’m gonna kill him.”

                “Well,” Bucky says, with a small, helpless shrug. “At least we have a plan.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh. So I _thought_ this fic was gonna make it through with a "Mature" rating. In retrospect, I have no idea why I thought that. It's been moved to "Explicit." The change is due to this chapter specifically, so everyone consider yourselves warned.

                The suit reappears nine hours after it leaves. Jason’s been napping on the couch in the workshop, but he jerks awake when Bucky nudges him, and then they’re both standing there, arms crossed, when the suit comes to rest on a raised, central platform.

                “Don’t start,” the suit says, and it’s Tony’s voice, but played through speakers. Modulated, a little bit electric in tone.

                “Oh, hey,” Jason says, pretending to check his watch. “Nine hours to Afghanistan and back, Buck. Let’s be fucking generous and say he only spent an hour coming up with a plan and dropping terrorists, and then another half hour playing grabass with Rhodes. So, help me with the math, here. How fast was he going?”

                Bucky hums as he calculates, mouth pulling to the side in thought.

                Jason’s already done the math. He’s better at that shit than most people assume. But he wants confirmation.

                “Mach 3 wouldn’t make that timeline,” Bucky says, after a few seconds. “Must’ve hit Mach 4 for at least part of the trip.”

                “Okay,” Tony says, still in his suit. “Can we not do this right now?”

                “Mach 4,” Jason says, feigning shock. “But, Bucky, are you suggesting our precious, beloved, extremely breakable boyfriend, who’s got a Goddamn _heart condition_ , was fucking around, going supersonic speeds in that getup?”

                “Seems like,” Bucky says. “Unless he’s invented teleportation.”

                “Are you intimating,” Jason says, voice rising, “that Tony was going supersonic speeds wearing less padding than high schoolers wear to kick _field goals_?”

                “Intimating,” Tony says, sounding incredulous. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

                “For fuck’s sake, Tony,” Jason says, throwing his hands up, “people wear better helmets when they ride _horses_.”

                The suit makes a low, grumbling noise that might be Tony sighing into the microphone. “That’s because horses _bite_.”

                Jason fails to see how the hell that’s relevant. “So do terrorists!”

                “Only if you let them get close.” Tony shifts in the suit, and it whirls, moves seamlessly. It’s beautiful, but Jason’s making an honest effort to stay focused. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I didn’t let any of them get that close.”

                “Oh,” Jason says, “well. _I_ feel better. Don’t you feel better, Bucky? Don’t you feel completely fucking relieved of all doubts and concerns?”

                “Not really,” Bucky says. “I’ve still got some questions about the bullet holes.”

                The faceplate flips up. Tony looks flushed, and pissed, and absolutely unrepentant. He also looks gorgeous. Jason distracts himself by glancing toward Bucky, who just looks resolute and tired.

                “I really don’t think,” Tony says, “that the two of you are in any position to judge me.” He holds his arms up, and his robots start removing the suit, plate by plate.

                Beside him, Jason catches Bucky tipping his head slowly to the side. “What do you think we’re judging you for?”

                Tony’s jaw works and then locks. He drops his eyes to the floor between them. The robots pull one of the plates from his shoulder, and Jason tracks it, makes himself stare at the bullet holes punched right through it.

                “If you need a hint,” Jason says, helpfully, “we’re judging you for fucking off _on your own_.”

                “It was my mess,” Tony says. There’s another kick of that anger, that well of emotion they keep stumbling into accidentally. It sounds exactly like the way he’d said _I’m not SHIELD property_ and _I’m fine_. “They were my weapons,” Tony says again, a little quieter, a little more controlled. “My weapons, my mess, my responsibility.”

                Jason doesn’t have a single Goddamn thing to say to that. Some of the derision must show on his face, though, because there’s a flash of hurt across Tony’s face followed immediately by that mean, closed-off look he gets when he’s feeling defensive.

                “Hydra was my mess,” Bucky says, quietly. “My responsibility.”

                Tony blinks and rocks back a little. “You didn’t create Hydra, asshole.”

                “You didn’t create the Ten Rings,” Bucky says. “They used you. Stane used you. If you’re responsible for everything other people do with your weapons, then I’m responsible for everything Hydra did through me.”

                “Which he isn’t,” Jason says. “Which _you_ aren’t. Jesus Christ, Tony.”

                The machines finish their work, and suddenly it’s just Tony standing there, without his metal suit. He looks hollowed out, exhausted, but there’s a flush lingering on his face and chest, a light sheen of sweat still cooling on the exposed skin of his throat.

                “You know what,” Tony says, stepping toward them, “you can both fuck off with this. This—what _is_ this? This condescension, this gatekeeping. Fuck off with it.  You’ve been happy for years while I was building weapons, and now that I’m trying to do something good, you’re telling me I can’t?”

                “Who’s saying that?” Jason says, hands up. “Who the hell is _saying_ that, Stark?”

                “Then what _is_ this?” Tony glares at both of them, balanced on the edge of the platform, scowling down at them. “I have to fix this. I’m _fixing_ it. They’ve been using my weapons to kill innocent people, and I have to make it right.”

                Jason turns to Bucky, beseeching, confused. “Buck,” he says, “what the fuck is going on?”

                Bucky considers Tony for a while, and then Jason, and then he sighs. “Tony thinks we’re telling him to stop.”

                “Jesus _Christ_ , Stark,” Jason says, pivoting back toward Tony and gesturing toward the suit. “Who’s saying stop? _No one_ is saying stop. That suit is the hottest fucking thing I’ve seen since the time Bucky killed that cartel guy with his _thighs_. Will you fucking listen to the words we’re saying?”

                “Fine,” Tony says. He crosses his arms over his chest and waits. “What are you saying?”

                He’s so snotty in that moment, so bared-teeth, braced-shoulders bratty, that Jason damn near throws something at his head. Instead, he throws his hands up and stomps off toward the minifridge in the corner, where Tony keeps emergency supplies, like saline drips and whiskey.

                “You’ve never wanted to fight before,” Bucky says. He’s better at this than Jason is. His tone stays softer, more reasonable. “Why are you fighting now? Because you had to, to get out of the cave? Tony, whatever you got made into, you don’t have to stay that way forever.”

                “Maybe I got better,” Tony says. “Maybe I learned a few things. Maybe I’m done spending my life behind bulletproof glass, waiting to hear if you two are coming home. Maybe I’m sick of sleeping in an empty bed because you’re off, getting shot at by weapons _I_ made.”

                “Wow,” Jason says, fishing a beer out of the back of the fridge. “There’s layers upon layers of this shit, Buck.”

                “Not helpful,” Bucky tells him.

                “Fuck off,” Tony bites out, a second later.

                Jason rolls his eyes. “Are you really arguing that you should get a spot on the front lines because we aren’t _home_ enough?”

                Tony’s eyebrows tic up, and he sneers. “I don’t need your permission to fight, Jason. Who gave _you_ permission?”

                “Batman,” Jason says, readily enough. “And I fucking died for it.”

                It’s an atom bomb of a comment, and Jason knows it when he says it. Tony blinks and goes still, and Bucky tenses up, eyes snapping shut for a long second. In the aftermath, Jason breathes out, runs his free hand through his hair.

                “Look,” he says. “ _Look_ at us, Tony. Look at who you’re talking to. We’re with you. No matter where you’re going, or what you have to do. Alright? We’re with you. You’re it for us. We’re always gonna be with you.”

                Tony’s face clouds over, complicating all of that pure, easy rage. He hesitates. “Then what the hell are we arguing about?”

                Jason makes a frustrated noise and takes a steadying sip of beer. It’s the stupid craft bullshit that he loves, that Bucky tolerates and Tony’s never cared about, and he knows Tony bought it for him, keeps it in the kitchen and in his workshop for _him_ , and it’s hard to stay mad at Tony, but it’s so Goddamn easy to be scared out of his mind. And, with Jason, they mostly look like the same thing.

                “You’re pissed cuz we’re always on missions when we should be here with you?” Jason tips his beer toward Tony, right at the glowing blue heart of him. “Well, _we’re_ pissed cuz we went all the way to Afghanistan to get you back, and you never fucking came home. You lock yourself up down here. You _lie_ to us. You don’t fucking talk to us about any of the shit going on in your head, and then you fuck off in untested tech to the middle of a Goddamn battlefield and take—what was that? How many shots? How many times did people shoot at you today, Tony?”

                 “I had to go,” Tony says, through clenched teeth, “or innocent people would’ve died.”

                 “For _fuck’s sake_ , Tony,” Jason says, and suddenly he’s the loud one. He’s yelling, and he doesn’t mean to, but now that he’s started there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop. “That’s what this life _is_. That’s what you’re signing up for. Dead, innocent people, piling up on your conscience, _forever_.”

                Jason takes a breath and then, when that doesn’t settle him, he takes a deep swallow of the beer in his hand. Tony’s watching him, tense and angry, and Bucky looks concerned all over again.

                 “I’m not telling you to stop,” Jason says. “I’m the last person in the world who would ever tell you to stop. I’m just saying you need to be fucking careful. Because once you start, you don’t ever get to stop. It’s your life. It’s the rest of your Goddamn life. They aren’t just sad statistics anymore, Tony. Every dead civilian becomes someone _you_ didn’t save. So, if you’re gonna do this, you’ve gotta know that going in. It’s not a bad life, but it _is_ the rest of your life. You don’t get to be all that other shit anymore.”

                Tony steps down off the platform, moves until he’s standing directly in front of Jason, staring up at him, jaw locked and eyes spitting focus and fight. “There isn’t anything else,” he says, even and clear. “There’s no playboy, there’s no socialite, there’s no industrialist. There’s no Merchant of Death. There’s us, and the team, and the next mission, and nothing else.”

                “Fuck,” Jason says, staring at him.

                There’s a moment where neither one of them moves, where everything between them just stretches out, hooks into Jason, and _tugs_.

                He’s beautiful.  He’s absolutely, stupidly, breathtakingly beautiful, with the light of all that conviction in his eyes, with his readiness to fight. He’s always been dangerous. Since that very first night, when Jason came to tell him his father was dead, and he menaced him with a welding torch, tased him unconscious, and then took him captive at gunpoint. He’s _always_ been dangerous.

                He’s never quite been like this.

                “The solution,” Tony says, and he’s shining with it; he’s practically fucking _glowing_ , “is to murder the fuck out of the problem.”

                Jason’s still for a second longer and then, without warning, he tosses his beer to Bucky and grabs Tony by the front of the shirt, drags him in so fast that they collide into each other. Tony’s hands are in his hair immediately, tugging him down, and then they’re kissing, mouths pressed urgently together, working against each other like they’re not ready to walk away from the fight yet, like even this has to be some kind of battle.

                Tony catches Jason’s bottom lip with his teeth and _bites_ , tightens his hands in Jason’s hair until it stings.

                “Fuck,” Jason says, again, and he reaches down, curls his hands around Tony’s hips and lifts, gets Tony’s legs wrapped around his waist without ever taking his mouth off him. He can’t stop touching him, can’t keep his hands or mouth off of him. The pull is magnetic, irresistible, inevitable. Feels _right_.

                “Can’t believe,” Tony says, already a little breathless, pressing a line of increasingly sloppy kisses down the line of Jason’s jaw, “that you wasted all that time _talking_ instead of skipping to this.”

                “ _I_ can’t believe,” Jason says, spilling Tony onto the closest worktable and shoving what’s probably a few thousand dollars’ worth of equipment onto the floor, “that you’re still running your Goddamn mouth.”

                Tony rolls his eyes and arches up, grabs for Jason’s shirt and reels him in. “You love my mouth.”

                Jason groans, low and deep and punched out, as Tony’s hands drop to his waist and pull him in, flush against him. “God,” he says, dropping his head so he can kiss him. “I really, really do.”

                Tony licks into his mouth, tugs Jason closer until their hips are pressed against each other. He makes a soft, needy noise when Jason shoves his compression shirt out of the way, finally gets his hands on Tony’s skin, still a little slick with sweat. Jason wrings another, louder noise out of him when he rolls his hips forward, grinds against him.

                “Fuck,” Tony says, head falling back. “Buck? Where’s—oh.” He blinks, staring over Jason’s shoulder, face softening into a slightly dopey grin. “Hey.”

                “Hey,” Bucky says. A second later, Bucky hooks his chin over Jason’s shoulder, presses his whole body up against Jason’s back. “I see you remembered the plan,” Bucky says, mouth moving against the soft, sensitive skin of Jason’s throat.

                “There’s a plan?” That easy, unguarded smile slips away, and Tony glances between them, teeth catching his own lip.

                “Yeah,” Bucky says. His mouth settles, hot and wet, on Jason’s neck, and Jason huffs out a breath, leans his head back against Bucky’s shoulder to give him more room. He’s caught between them, bracketed and surrounded, and all the nervous twisting in his head, all that building unease that’s been poisoning him since Tony got taken, is boiling out of him, burning up in the heat of their bodies. “What was your plan, Jay?”

                Jason swallows and blinks his eyes open to stare down at Tony, who’s watching them, a little dazed, a lot worked up. “Oh, yeah,” Jason says, as Bucky’s hand works down his stomach, slips just under the hem of his jeans. “Was gonna fuck you til you couldn’t do addition.”

                Tony groans. “Jesus _Christ_.”

                “Could take awhile,” Bucky says, thoughtfully. “He’s pretty good at math. Might wanna get started.”

                “Will someone,” Tony says, voice taut, half-strangled, “ _please_ fucking touch me? For fuck’s sake, I just _saved lives_. Will someone _please--_ ”

                He cuts off with a high, needy whine when Jason slips his hand down from his hip, palms Tony through his jeans. “Always did like it,” Jason says, flicking open the button, pushing down the zipper, “when you say please.”

                “Please fuck off,” Tony snaps back, reflexively, but the noise he makes when Jason gets his hand around him is so damn _grateful_ that there isn’t any sting to it at all. “Nevermind,” he says, eyes slipping closed. “Don’t fuck off. I rescind that.”

                “Well,” Jason says, magnanimously, “since you rescinded it.” Jason leans down to kiss him again and then jacks him slow, steady, the way he likes it in the beginning.

                Tony pushes up on his elbows and tugs at Jason’s shirt. “Off,” he says, and Jason obliges, taking his hands off Tony just long enough to hook his shirt up and off of him, throws it halfway across the workshop.

                Tony hums appreciatively and then runs a hand down Jason’s chest, traces the dips and swells of his abs and then skims his hand back up, starts running his fingertips over all the scars on Jason’s body like he’s trying to map them out. Jason wonders if he’s seeing his future, if he’s finally seeing Jason’s scars as something he’ll share, instead of something he’ll worry over.

                “Hey,” Bucky says, stepping from behind Jason to right next to him. “Come here.”

                Tony turns his head to look at him. That flush from before is back, settling across his cheeks, and he looks strung out, almost brittle. Needy and jittery and dazed. All that adrenaline, Jason thinks, leaving him leveled, emptied out and tense, in a Goddamn tailspin. Tony’s not used to it, the way the time after a battle can fuck you up more than the fight itself.

                Bucky’s hand curls around the back of Tony’s head. He leans forward, presses his mouth against Tony’s, and then they’re kissing, languid and showy and slow. Jason watches Bucky’s tongue slip into Tony’s mouth, watches Tony’s eyes slip shut, eyelashes fluttering against the dark bags under his eyes.

                “Buck,” Tony says, quiet and tense, a little shakey, mumbles it right against Bucky’s lips, “please.”

                 “Yeah, I know,” Bucky says. He kisses him again. “I know what you need.”

                Bucky’s hand moves up into Tony’s hair, smooths it gently back from Tony’s face, and he tips his head to send Jason a short, significant look.

                There’s always a crash. After every fight. With the smaller missions, Jason doesn’t even feel it anymore. A few downed criminals wouldn’t register much beyond a little tension in his hands, a vague disquiet in the back of his mind. But Tony was a civilian until he built himself a suit of armor, and Jason can count the number of fatal fights he’s had on one hand. The Hydra agent he shot in Gotham, the escape from the cave, and now this trip to Afghanistan.

                It’s different, when you bring yourself to war, when it’s something you’ve signed up for. There’s a different comedown.

                Tony’s all keyed up, hips moving restlessly, hands tightening convulsively against the metal worktable. Jason watches his throat work as he swallows, puts one hand flat against Tony’s stomach and feels the hummingbird beat of his pulse.

                They’re balanced on something, Jason thinks. A knifeblade, the point of a needle. It’d be easy to tip any direction at all.

                “Hey,” Jason says. Tony’s eyes stay shut, so Jason goes still, takes his hand off Tony and ignores the accusatory noise Tony makes. “You still with us? You alright?”

                Tony blinks his eyes open. For a second, he’s nothing, just blank and staring, and then all that light flickers back into his eyes, and he’s exasperated. “Will _someone_ ,” he says, “just _please_ get me off? You know what? Fuck it. I’ll do it myself.”

                Tony’s hands drop away from Jason and Bucky, move toward himself, and Jason grabs them, pins them, and holds them against the metal of the table as he drops to his knees.

                “Oh, fuck,” Tony says, throaty and desperate. “That’s even better.”

                Jason rolls his eyes, and doesn’t bother to hide his smirk. He keeps his hands on Tony’s wrists, braces his forearms against his thighs to hold him down, and then he gets his mouth around his cock.

                Tony groans, low and approving, and then there’s a shift, and Jason hears the soft, wet sounds of Tony and Bucky kissing above him.

                There are gentler ways to do this, definitely. Slower ways. Jason could tease him, draw it out. But Jason doesn’t know what the hell the aftershocks of all that adrenaline are going to do to Tony, and it’s best to wear him out fast, get him in bed before his brain spins him up in ways that won’t be helpful.

                And, after all the years they’ve been together, Jason knows exactly how to get him off fast and filthy and hard.

                Toward the end, Tony seems to lose the thread of kissing, and Jason looks up to see Bucky sucking marks against Tony’s neck while Tony mumbles nonsense. “Fuck,” he says, staring down at Jason, “Jay, c’mon, I’ve gotta— for fuck’s sake, Buck, I’m gonna die. I’m— _fuck_.”

                “C’mon, sweetheart,” Bucky says, half-encouragement, half-dare.

                Tony makes a soft, choked-off noise, and Jason feels a hand settle in his hair, guide him lower, make him take Tony deeper.

                He’s got both of Tony’s hands still pinned down, so that’s Bucky. Jason moans, pushes back against the hand in his hair just to feel the strength in it, the way it doesn’t give an inch.

                “Fuck,” Tony says, and then, again, twisted up, “ _fuck_.”

                And then he’s coming down Jason’s throat, with no fucking warning, and Bucky’s hand disappears, lets Jason pull back so he can swallow without choking. It’s too much, too fast, and he doesn’t get all of it. He’s about to wipe the mess off his chin when Bucky hauls him up and licks it off for him, cleans him up with his mouth and tongue.

                “Oh, fuck,” Tony says. His elbows slip out from under him, and he lands, flat on his back, on the worktable. He sounds wrecked. “Fuck this superhero bullshit. It’s you two that are gonna kill me.”

                “Oh, he’s a superhero now,” Jason says. “Hear that, Buck?”

                “Got his first celebratory, saved lives blowjob, didn’t he?” Bucky shrugs and then fits their mouths together for another lingering kiss. “Seems like he’s a superhero to me.”

                “Saved lives,” Tony says. He lifts his arms in a half-hearted show of victory. “Woo.”

                “We gotta get him to bed,” Jason says, tipping his head in Tony’s direction.

                Bucky thinks that over for a second. His eyes drop to Jason’s mouth, and he brings his hand up to Jason’s face, drags his thumb over Jason’s lower lip. “Works for me,” he says, after a beat. “That’s where I want you anyway.”

 

 

 

                Later, in bed, Jason rolls over to he can hook one of his legs around one of Tony’s, and then he says, “So, what’s with the drowning thing?”

                Tony heaves in a breath, startled and gasping. “Oh, fuck you,” he says, “not right _now_.”

                “Definitely right now,” Jason says. He noses at the back of Tony’s neck, presses a kiss to the skin right below his ear. “Won’t be any easier later.”

                “He’s probably right,” Bucky says. He’s stretched out on the other side of Tony, but he’s close enough that Jason could brush his fingertips down his arm or chest, if he reached. “When’s better than now?”

                Tony swallows. He’s too wrung out to tense up much, but Jason feels him squirm and then shiver. “Just,” he says, and then stops. He takes another breath, fills his chest, and then slowly breathes out. His hand grabs for Jason’s, and their fingers knot together. “That’s how they did it. Interrogation. Whatever. They held my head underwater. Over, and over.”

                Jason closes his eyes. He wants to get angry, but he’s worn out, too. He burrows in closer to Tony, presses his forehead against his neck and wraps his arm a little tighter around him.

                “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to you faster.”

                Tony shakes his head. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to buy you more time.”

                “None of this is your fault,” Jason says, and, look at that, maybe he _does_ have enough energy left in him to get angry.

                “Not your fault, either,” Tony says.

                “Why were you in the pool, Tony?” Bucky’s on his side now, looking at both of them. He makes a face at whatever he sees in Tony’s eyes and then leans forward, runs a careful hand through his hair. “What were you doing?”

                “It’s not—I was just.” Tony curls in, pulls away from Jason for a second until Jason just follows after him, nestles back against him. “That’s what you would’ve done. If you had a weakness, you’d find a way to—I don’t know. Work it out of you.”

                “No,” Bucky says. “That’s not how it works.”

                “That _is_ how it works,” Tony says. “I can’t have these problems if I’m going on missions. I can’t have weaknesses. Natasha says--”

                “Natasha,” Bucky says, cutting him off, “would not say that.”

                Jason gets it. He does. He knows what it’s like, to want to cauterize the bleeding parts of yourself, to want to stitch it up and let it fester, ignore it until it rots and dies and can’t hurt you anymore. He also knows that it doesn’t work.

                “It’ll get better in its own time,” Jason says, “or it won’t. And if it doesn’t, we find a workaround. You don’t have to be perfect if you’ve got a team. You’ve just gotta be perfect _as_ a team.”

                Bucky pushes himself up and leans over Tony, grabs Jason by the hair, and kisses him hard and urgent, like maybe they’re going to get started all over again. After a second, he drops him, breathless, back to the bed. “Yes,” he says, grim and serious, proud. “Yes, exactly.”

                Jason buries his face in Tony’s shoulder and tells himself it’s not cowardice. Sometimes, even now, Bucky can still overwhelm the hell out of him.

                “There was a man,” Tony says, into the quiet stillness that settles between them. “In the cave with me. Yinsen. He was from Gulmira. They brought him down there to translate. He was there because of me. And he died for me. I needed more time, and he got it for me. They must’ve shot him a dozen times, but he was still alive, when I got to him.”

                Jason closes his eyes. That’s harder than fighting. Harder than killing. It’s the worst Goddamn thing, watching someone die for you.

                He gets it. He understands. That’s the kind of thing that breaks you to pieces. He knows now why Tony would need to hole up in his workshop, rebuild himself into something he could stand to look at in the mirror.

                “I promised him,” Tony says. “I promised him I wouldn’t waste my life.”

                Jason is offended, to his marrow, that Tony thinks he’s wasted his life to this point. He wants to bring up all the good Tony’s done, the lives he’s saved through medical advances and intelli-crops and putting weapons into the right hands. But he keeps his mouth shut, lets Tony bleed the poison out at his own pace.

                “I’ve gotta break even.” Tony rolls onto his back so he can see both of them. “Like Nat. Like _you_ , Buck. I have to do this. I’ve gotta build the suits, and I have to get my weapons back. I have to make this right.” He hesitates, eyes flicking between them. “I don’t want to do it alone.”

                “You won’t,” Bucky says.

                “Never,” Jason says, a second later. “We’re with you,” he repeats, from earlier. “No matter where you’re going, or what you have to do.”

                Tony stares at them for a second and then nods, slowly. He brings his hands up and presses his fingertips against his eyes, takes a deep, steadying breath. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

                “Get some sleep,” Jason suggests, tugging Tony against him. The arc reactor is bright in the darkness, and it annoyed Jason, at first, but now it’s just an instant reminder that Tony’s right next to him, safe, and warm, and breathing. “You gotta take me flying later.”

                “Didn’t put handles on the suit,” Tony mumbles, as he settles in.

                Jason snorts and rolls his eyes. He shares a fond, indulgent look with Bucky. “Yeah,” he says, “we’ll figure something out.”

 

 

 

                The insistent trilling of Jason’s phone wakes him up, some untold hours or minutes later. He groans and rolls over, grabs it off the bedside table, and holds it to his ear. “What,” he grumbles, in his best approximation of alert readiness.

                Beside him, he feels Tony stirring, hears Bucky make a questioning noise.

                “Hi, Red,” Natasha greets, pleasant and sweet in a way that makes Jason’s heart stop in his chest. “Feel like earning a little beer and gratitude?”

                Jason hears himself, right before Clint, Coulson, and Nat left. _If you do something stupid and get into shit, just call me, alright? I don’t care if it won’t be SHIELD official. You can pay me back in beer and gratitude._

“What happened?” Jason sits up, shoving the sheets aside. “What’s going on?”

                There’s a pause, a distant burst of noise that could be static or gunfire. “Had some trouble,” Nat says. Her tone is still even and composed, but there’s a disconcerting edge to it. “They’ve got Coulson,” she says, “and Clint.”

                “Okay,” Jason says, feeling all the lethargy and peace packing up in his chest, storing itself somewhere safe while the rage kicks its way to the forefront. “We’re on our way.”


	12. Chapter 12

                They take Tony’s jet to Afghanistan. There’s a scramble at first, when they’re all rushing around Tony’s house, pulling on body armor and grabbing weapons. Jason throws food into a backpack, and Bucky fills a duffle bag with medical supplies, and they’re loading up the jet when Tony comes trotting up, already in his suit.

                “I’m coming with you,” he tells them. The eyes of his suit glow, and his tone is terse. He looks ready to trash both of them, if they object.

                “Sure are,” Bucky says, pressing a quick kiss to his faceplate as he passes him.

                Jason opens his mouth for a second and then shuts it. He started playing Robin at twelve. What the hell right does he have to tell a grown man he can’t suit up if he wants to? And, anyway, despite what every Bat might claim, Jason knows a lost cause when he sees one. And the older he gets, the less they feel like dares.

                 “You all reloaded?” Jason asks instead, swallowing back the objections that won’t do any good. “Bullet holes patched? What kinda downtime does that thing need between missions?”

                Tony hesitates. His head swivels toward Bucky and then back to Jason.

                Jason just shrugs and then exchanges a quick look with Bucky, who stares steadily back at him. They’re suited up, outfitted in the optimal mashup of Stark and SHIELD tech, and Bucky’s tucking his favorite knives into their sheathes while Jason’s sliding a gun he gave Tony once, years ago, into a side-holster, for luck.

                 “They’re your team, too,” Jason says, after a moment. “You want in, you’re in.”

                Tony’s faceplate flips up, and he grins at them, eyes lit up with a kind of unholy glee that pulls Jason in like a magnet, makes him wrap his gloved hands around the cold metal of the suit and kiss him, properly, like this is the kind of mission that can wait a while.

                “Alright,” Bucky says, hooking a hand in Jason’s shoulder holsters and hauling him toward the jet. “It’s a three-hour flight. Plenty of time for that on the way.”

                “C’mon,” Jason says, tightening his hand around the suit, right up near Tony’s elbow. He tugs, and there’s resistance. For a second, Tony doesn’t shift at all. It’s fucking thrilling, the realization that he couldn’t move Tony. Not in that suit, not unless Tony wanted him to. “Let’s go be heroes.”

                “Hell yes,” Tony says, as he moves to follow.

 

 

 

                They call Nat when they’re in the air. “You know,” Jason says, “you didn’t have to orchestrate this whole thing just so we’d feel needed. We know damn well you guys can’t get shit done without us.”

                “Just trying to be supportive,” Natasha says. There’s gunfire in the background, muted and stuttering, and then one quick reply from close-up, a single shot, followed by a soft, humming exhale that Jason’s heard from Nat often enough to translate to _kill shot_. “Mind putting a bit of a rush on things? This was supposed to be a twenty-four hour op. I’ve got dinner plans.”

                “In Afghanistan?” Jason tries to remember if they know anyone who’s stationed out there right now. “With _who_?”

                “We’re on our way,” Bucky says, because he seems to believe, erroneously, that Natasha is old enough to pick out her own dinner partners without their input. “Status report?”

                There’s more gunfire and then a shuffling noise, silence on the line until Natasha breathes out hard. “Alright,” she says. “Sorry, had to get to better cover.”

                “Oh, don’t let us interrupt,” Jason says, like his fingers aren’t itching towards his palms at the idea that Nat’s out there, drawing fire, without any of her team.

                “Guess someone’s pissed we took out Stane,” Natasha says. “We’re hunting up his military contacts. Figure someone panicked, tipped off Ten Rings, and they grabbed Coulson right off the base.”

                “They took Coulson,” Jason says, alarmed, “on _purpose_? This was targeted?”

                “Unclear.” Natasha sounds as frustrated by that as Jason feels. “It’s possible they just wanted to grab someone who’d make an impact. And, you know, Coulson.”

                “Looks important, acts important, doesn’t look like trouble,” Jason says. “Yeah.”

                “Wouldn’t’ve been quiet,” Bucky says, because they don’t get to see Phil fight often, but, when they do, it’s always worth watching. “Should we pick up a medic on the way?”

                “No need,” Nat says. “You know those nice PJ boys we palled around with last time we were in the area? A couple of them were happy to come to our rescue.”

                “Hey, Tony,” Jason says, tipping his head toward where Tony’s sitting, faceplate up, messing with the display in front of him, “buy those guys something nice, okay?”

                “Oh, you’re bringing Tony,” Natasha says. She sounds breathless for a second and then there’s the echoing crack of a nearby explosion. “How nice.”

                “You’re not gonna believe what he’s wearing.” Jason grins at Tony, who rolls his eyes without looking up, blushes a little as he keeps working. “It’s the sexiest fucking thing. You’re gonna be so jealous.”

                “Well,” Natasha says, “I’m not going to make wild accusations about a certain deathbot that was spotted in Gulmira yesterday, but I bet he’d make something just as sexy for me, if I asked.”

                “Sure, Nat,” Tony says, finally looking up. “You want it in black and red?”

                “How’d they get Hawkeye?” Bucky determinedly redirects the conversation to the matter at hand. The closer they get to a war zone, the more the Winter Soldier comes out in him. Jason hates to see the Winter Soldier in peacetime, still hasn’t completely forgiven Bucky for retreating into him when Tony got taken, but he loves to see him when they go to battle.

                Jason’s starting to realize that taking both Bucky _and_ Tony into the field is going to be one hell of a distraction.

                “Oh,” Nat laughs, a little high, a little despairing. “Hawkeye heard they grabbed Coulson, and he dropped out of his nest, let them get a two-for-one deal.”

                “Jesus Christ,” Jason says, rubbing at his face. “No backup?”

                “Nope,” Nat says. “None. I told him to get his ass back to cover, but he could see Coulson, so.”

                “Right.” Jason sighs. Once, back before he started working for SHIELD, he thought that if Coulson was very, very lucky, Clint would only catch one or two bullets for him over the course of their careers. So far, Coulson’s managed to keep that bullet count to zero, but Jason’s got some doubts about the present sanctity of his record.

                “I’d appreciate it,” Nat says, “if you boys would hurry. Coulson and Hawkeye aren’t Tony Stark. There’s no reason to keep them alive. We’re keeping them a little too busy to set up a nice filmed execution, but people make time for the things they love.”

                “Right,” Jason says. He doesn’t look at Tony, but he hears the suit whir quietly, like he’s tensed up or curled his hands into fists.

                “Jet can take Mach 5,” Tony says. “I’ve been upgrading it.”

                “Got it,” Bucky says. “Widow, we’re a couple hours out.”

                “Alright,” she says, breathing hard again, “we’ll distract them ‘til then.”

                “Appreciate it,” Bucky says. “Call us with any updates.”

                “Naturally,” she drawls. There’s a quick intake of breath followed immediately by a sick crunching sound and a wet, rasping rattle. “God,” she says, and, just for a second, she sounds absolutely feral, “snipers even _die_ quiet.”

                “Goodness me,” Jason says, and disconnects the call quickly. He shoots a glance at Tony, who’s looking a little wide-eyed around the edges but otherwise relatively calm.

                “So,” Tony says, slowly. “So, she’s pretty pissed, huh?”

                Jason snorts. He gets a series of still-image flashbacks of the time Bucky and Clint got grabbed in Somalia, of Coulson setting him and Nat loose, letting them raise whatever hell they wanted, so long as they got his team back. The blood had been stuck under Jason’s fingernails for days afterward. Natasha had ended up with red smeared across her _face_.

                He thinks about the only other time they’d lost Coulson, when a local intelligence agent sold them out, handed Coulson to a cartel who dosed him with a drug cocktail they must’ve based off Scarecrow’s recipes. He thinks about the mess they made, the four of them, about the way Natasha had smiled afterwards, grim and pleased and righteous, while she cleaned the blood off her knives.

                “Yeah,” Jason says, slowly, mouth hooking up even though he manages to keep his tone relatively flat, “she doesn’t like it when people fuck with things that belong to her.”

 

 

 

                They’re forty-five minutes out when Batman hacks into their comm lines. “Red Hood,” he says, and Jason groans audibly, just on reflex. “Why is Robin flying to Afghanistan?”

                Jason chokes. He looks at Tony, whose whole face lights up like it’s Christmas, and then Bucky, who looks amused and tolerant, almost indulgent. “No fucking clue,” Jason says, after a beat.

                Bruce makes a noise like, somehow, he doesn’t fully believe him. “Why are _you_ flying to Afghanistan?”

                “The crisp desert air,” Jason offers. “The scenic vistas.”

                “Red Hood,” Bruce says, “what happened? Is C-”

                “Whoops,” Jason says, and draws a line over his throat, makes desperate, hopeful eyes toward Tony. “Sorry, you’re breaking up. Man, reception is _terrible_.”

                Jason makes a series of screechy, half-assed static noises until Tony obligingly fills the channel with feedback and then cuts it.

                Silence reigns for a few seconds and then Jason sighs, wistful for a time when his life wasn’t so complicated. “You know,” he says, begrudgingly, “I’m really starting to root for those two.”

                “Think Robin’ll meet us there?” Tony tips his head to the side. “Should we try to contact him?”

                “Good Christ, _absolutely_ not,” Jason says, horrified. “Don’t encourage him. How the hell do you think he knew to come to Afghanistan? He hacked us, or he planted something on Barton. Either way, if you let him party with us once, he’s gonna think he’s invited every time.”

                “Friendly fire,” Bucky says, probably less casually than he means to, “still gets people killed.”

                “No one’s gonna accidentally kill Robin,” Jason says. “He’s a fucking professional.”

                There’s another patch of quiet. Bucky and Tony exchange a look that Jason really doesn’t appreciate.

                He huffs, rolling his eyes and going back to checking his guns. “And don’t ever, _ever_ tell the little jerk I said that.”

 

 

 

                They’re nearly to the location when Tony hums thoughtfully, blinks like something just occurred to him. “Wait,” he says. “Wait. How do we have these coordinates?”

                Jason grimaces. “Tracker,” he says, only a little evasively. “Coulson has one.”

                “The hell he does,” Tony says. He looks incredulous, almost insulted. “I would’ve noticed.”

                Of course he would have. Tony steals information, but he doesn’t share it. He’s been interrupting their ops for years now, offering up advice and intel, when SHIELD misses it. No one knows how much of SHIELD he’s hacked. Even Jason hasn’t asked, so he’ll have plausible deniability if Fury ever opts to get shitty about it. But, however happy Tony is to take data from anyone in the world, he locks his own shit down like it’s a point of pride, like he’d have to murder himself in shame if anyone other than the tech-inclined Bats got into his files.

                Coulson has been in Tony’s house. If he had an active GPS tracker, Tony would’ve known.

                “Wasn’t active until about three hours ago,” Jason says. He taps the screen in front of him, pulls up the data, lets Tony get a look at it.

                “Stress triggered?” Tony asks, after a second. He looks considering, verging on calculating, and Jason needs to put a stop to that line of thinking before he gets too far down the path of it.

                “Absolutely not,” Jason says. “Trust me. SHIELD’s worked on that. You set a heart rate as a trigger, and, suddenly, every agent on leave is getting their bedroom doors kicked open. Doesn’t fucking work.”

                Tony looks unimpressed, the way he always looks before he outthinks everyone, including himself, and starts causing trouble. “But what if--”

                “It’s manually triggered,” Bucky says. “Implanted in the pinky finger. Breaking the finger activates the tracker.”

                “Like a glow stick,” Jason says. He wraps his right hand around his left pinky finger and mimes a quick snap. “That’s how you know it’s time to party.”

                “Barbaric,” Tony says. He doesn’t seem impressed by the glow stick metaphor, which is too bad. Jason’s pretty sure Coulson had secretly loved it. “Why didn’t they just ask for my help?”

                “Barton tripped his, too,” Bucky says.

                Tony looks horrified. “He broke his _finger_? He’s an _archer_.”

                “Not his finger,” Jason says. They’re not _idiots_. “He’s got his in one of his toes.”

                Tony sighs heavily and shakes his head. He looks acutely disappointed in all of them. “You people,” he says, “ _need_ me on this team.”

                And, hell, maybe they do. Maybe they always have. Jason grins at him. “You gonna build us new toys, Stark?”

                Tony rolls his eyes. “Well, I’m sure as hell not going to make anyone _break their own bones_ to get a little emergency assistance. I mean, honestly--”

                “Location report,” Natasha says. Her voice breaks over the line without warning. She must be in some kind of hurry. “You boys in the area yet? My air support needs air support.”

                “Closing in, Widow,” Bucky says, immediately.

                “I thought we _were_ your air support,” Jason says, right after. “Widow, are you cheating on us?”

                “Not yet,” Natasha says. Jason can practically hear the wolfish grin in her voice. Below that, there’s a glimmer of concern.

                She’s transmitting visual, suddenly, and it lights up the screen. When she speaks again, there’s a shifting of her tone, a slight fading in volume, and Jason thinks maybe she’s talking into some other mic. “Speaking of wearing something sexy,” she says, “you angels wanna give them a peek?”

                There’s a few seconds of nothing and then a quicksilver shine of something bright, moving fast. Tony leans forward, messes with the display until the screen settles on a still-image of a man, holding steady in midair, held aloft by gumental gray wings.

                “Oh, shit,” Tony says, approvingly, “that _is_ sexy.”

                A second later, there’s the flash of gunfire, and the screen goes dark as Natasha gets back to work, drops the visual feed.

                “That light armor won’t hold up against an RPG,” Natasha says. “Incidentally, I’m watching them load a few now.”

                “Well,” Tony says, “looks like I’m up.”

                He disengages the safety harness and climbs to his feet. The faceplate flips down, and Jason forces himself to remain in his seat. _Let him fight_ , he tells himself, shoving aside the shrill, panicky part of him that wants to object. _Don’t be Bruce. Don’t smother him and pretend it’s for his protection._

                Behind them, the ramp starts opening. Jason cranes his neck to stare at Tony, but he doesn’t leave his seat.

                “Be careful,” Bucky calls.

                “Kick ass,” Jason yells.

                Tony doesn’t respond. As soon as the ramp’s opened enough to grant clearance, he jumps, goes horizontal, and rockets toward the fight.

                They’re silent for a few seconds on the jet, and then Jason clears his throat. “Goddamn,” he says, with feeling. “Think this whole thing will hold for fifteen minutes? I need to get my hands on him.”

                “I think we don’t have a socket wrench,” Bucky says, “and that suit doesn’t come off easy.”

                Jason heaves a regretful sigh. “Yeah,” he says, “you’re probably right.”

 

 

 

                They gather on the ground about twenty minutes later. Natasha materializes next to the jet, sweat-soaked and a little pale, but not bleeding from anywhere important. She takes the water Jason hands her and downs the whole bottle in neat, mechanical swigs while she watches the sky.

                “How’d you recruit these guys?” Jason asks, passing her another bottle and pulling open Bucky’s bag of medical supplies so he can start patching the cuts she’s acquired.

                “Oh, you know,” Natasha shrugs, one-shouldered, holding herself still while Jason gets to work, “at knifepoint.”

                “Proud of you,” Jason says.

                As if cued by the shit-talk, one of them drops fast, swooping in, wings beating to slow his descent. He takes the landing harder than he’s probably trained for, rolls into it to shake the worst of the hit, and pops up, hand pressed to his comm, looking worried.

                “Riley,” he says, loud and insistent. “Riley, what the hell, man, where are--”

                “Got him,” Tony’s voice echoes in Jason’s ears. There’s a strained, mumbly focus in his voice that Jason recognizes as him multitasking. In the distance, there’s the muffled boom of a small explosion. “Cupid recovered.”

                “It’s alright, Wilson,” Natasha says. She has two comm units, one in each ear, and Tony’s probably going to roll his eyes and bitch about unnecessarily duplication of tech in the field, but, for right now, she’s the only one who can hear everyone.

                “He isn’t answering,” the flyer says, eyes settling on Nat with a sick, swooping kind of stoic distress. “He’s--”

                “Status report on the fallen angel,” Natasha says, smoothly. Wilson blinks, shoulders pulling back a little, and there’s a second where it looks like maybe he’s going to be pissed, but then he seems soothed, instead.

                Jason recognizes him as the PJ that jumped out of the helicopter with them, the one who’d been there, kneeling in the sand, helping to pull pieces of metal off of Tony. It’s not good to see him, exactly, but Jason resolves to look after him. This guy’s taken care of his team twice now. He owes him.

                “Status report is incoming,” Tony says. A second later, he appears at the skyline. A handful of seconds after that, he resolves into the shape of two men.

                There’s Tony, in his metal armor, and then another man wrapped around his back, legs locked around the waist of the suit, arms propped over his shoulders, dual-wielding submachine guns. It’s a hell of an entrance, and Jason’s too busy admiring the suit to get jealous that Tony took someone else flying before him.

                “Wilson!” The man grins when they touch down, sliding off Tony’s back with a grace that reminds Jason a little of Nat, a little of Grayson. “Can we hang with these guys all the time? They’ve got a really badass robot.”

                “Yeah, thanks, cherub,” Tony says. “Thanks, also, for kicking me in the balls about six times.”

                “Holy shit,” the man says. He falters for a second and then that grin comes back even brighter. “You’re a real boy in there, aren’t you?”

                “Well,” Tony says, “I _was_.”

                Wilson grabs the other flyer by the harness of his pack and drags him into a hug that Jason recognizes as the traditional _you should be dead, you fucking dumbass_ embrace. He clears his throat, casts a glance towards Natasha, who’s tracking the two of them with an intensity that makes Jason roll his eyes.

                “C’mon, Widow,” he says. “This is a rescue mission.”

                “Yeah,” she says, drawling it out, eyebrows pulling together like she genuinely doesn’t understand the objection. “And they’re para _rescue_ men.”

                Wilson pulls back, straightens himself out. He’s vulnerable for a half second longer, and then all that worry disappears, and he’s just exasperated. “You guys gotta get in trouble every time you come to the desert? This is my day off.”

                “We just like the attention,” Natasha says, with a flash of teeth.

                “You’d get lots of attention somewhere tropical,” Wilson tells her. “Have you considered Hawaii? Fiji? Beaches have a lot of sand, too.”

                “Hell,” Riley says, as he starts adjusting his harness, flipping open safety locks and loosening straps, “I’m glad you guys showed up. Someone taught those Ten Rings bastards how to aim, and, gotta say, it is ruining my whole afternoon. They fucked up my wings, Sam.”

                “Yeah,” Wilson says, jaw tight, “I know.”

                Riley shrugs all of that concern aside and slaps Tony on the shoulder, makes the suit ring a little. “Thanks for the ride,” he says. “You got a comment card I could fill out? I’ll give you five stars.”

                “Maybe afterwards,” Tony says.

                “Yeah,” Natasha says. She’s as patched as she’s going to get unless she starts ditching body armor, and she steps away from Jason, shrugs like she’s resettling a weight on her shoulders. “Been kind of a long day. Why don’t we finish this up?”

                “Sounds good to me,” Riley says, as he drops his pack to the ground. His tone is a little high, a little breathy, like his body’s still processing a hell of an adrenaline dump, but his hands are steady as he checks over his guns. “Can I leave my wings here? Whose jet is this? It’s beautiful. Damn, can we steal it?”

                “I like him,” Tony says. “What is he, Air Force? Can we fix that?”

                “I saw them first,” Natasha says, a little singsong. She tips her head to the west. “Let’s go grab our boss and see if getting rescued makes him feel like writing a transfer request.”

                “Damn, that’s sweet,” Riley says, eyes flicking between Nat and Tony. “Wilson, that’s sweet, right? Feels like getting picked first for kickball.”

                “Okay,” Jason says, because he’s done all his weapons checks, and Nat and Bucky have finished theirs, and both of the new kids seem to have sorted themselves out. “Huddle up, kids. Let’s make a plan.”

 

 

 

                The plan is a little bit bullshit, but Coulson’s not around to tell them not to take risks, and Clint’s not around to remind them why they care about the potential consequences. Bucky and Jason go in first, with Tony right after them, because, as loathe as Jason is to admit it, Tony is the least bothered by bullets now that he’s armored up. Nat’s after them, with her two fledglings, and Nat is pissed, because she’s fast and light, wants to play scout, but they don’t need one.

                “We’re not hiding,” Jason says. “We’re not being subtle. We’re not doing recon on this. We’re gonna murder everyone who’s not a hostage.”

                “Huh,” Riley says, “so, you guys, you’re not really worried about how that’s gonna sound, reporting it to your CO?”

                “Our CO,” Jason says, “is in that fucking cave.”

                Riley blinks. “Fair enough,” he says, with a helpless little shrug and a quick glance at Wilson’s face.

                Wilson’s been messing with his harness, but he looks up the second Riley’s eyes fall on him, like they’ve got some kind of sense for each other. He’s still for a moment, getting a read on Riley’s face, and then he nods, steady and serious, and Riley grins back.

                “They know where the wings are weak,” Wilson says. “Sounds like a liability.”

                He’s good at that, Jason thinks. Smart enough not to lie outright. Redirection’s always easier, because it’s just a secondary version of the truth. But Jason hears it anyway. Wilson says _They know where the wings are weak_ , and Jason hears _They tried to kill you._

                “You know what they say,” Natasha says, breezy and relaxed. “Dead men sell no military secrets.” The flyers turn to blink at her, and she shrugs. “Hard to talk,” she tries, “when your lungs are on the outside of your chest cavity.”

                It’s cute, Jason thinks. It’s fucking adorable, the way Natasha flirts, when she’s trying to impress someone.

                “Is she always like this during a fight?” Wilson asks, after a beat. He is, ostensibly, talking to Bucky, or Jason, or maybe Tony, but his eyes are locked on Natasha. He sounds halfway between impressed and intimidated, which is exactly the kind of tone Jason likes to hear from men who are circling Natasha.

                “God,” Riley says, flashing another puppyish grin. He sounds charmed, maybe a little adoring, and Jason, after a moment of reflection, decides that passes, as well. “God, I _hope_ so.”

 

 

 

                There’s a moment before they go in, when Tony’s gone so still and silent that Jason almost thinks he’s disappeared, is off somewhere else, piloting the suit remotely. “Hey,” Jason says, soft enough that none of the others should be able to hear. “If you don’t wanna go in, you don’t have to. No one’s gonna blame you for not wanting to go into a place like that. You’ve already done enough.”

                The suit whirs, clicks and hums, sounds like it’s powering up to blow the whole fucking area to hell and back. “I’m going,” Tony says, flat and robotic.

                If Jason were better, softer and sweeter, raised by gentle people in a nice neighborhood, maybe he’d tell Tony to sit this one out. Maybe he wouldn’t understand. Maybe he’d think that the way to deal with fear is to avoid it, to let your knuckles heal before you start throwing punches again.

                But Jason grew up in Crime Alley, and so, instead, he knows that sometimes the best way to clean a cut is to reopen it, let it bleed until all that blood’s washed away any chance of infection.

                “Alright,” he says. “Let’s get our team back.”

 

 

 

                It’s ugly, when they get inside. _They’re_ ugly. Jason knows, the second they find Clint kneeling on the ground, dripping blood down his face, wearing that particular kind of _I’m not here right now, leave a message_ grin he wears when someone’s tripped him right out of his head, that things are going to get out of control.

                He’s not sorry about it. He’s not sorry about any of it. He wishes, a little, that this weren’t the first mission Tony chose for a ridealong, but he’s learned, over time, the importance of being honest.

                And, as much as he’s braced for it, as much as he can’t stop himself from expecting it, Tony’s never shied away from the worst parts of him. Tony’s got this weird, bizarre, miraculous ability to look at the worst parts of him like they’re worth just as much as the rest. Like there’s no clause waiting at the end of the declaration, like _I love you_ doesn’t make any Goddamn sense mashed up against _but not this part of you_.

                Even here, Tony doesn’t flinch from much. He’s fast with kill shots, and Jason can’t work out if it’s mercy or efficiency or both. He doesn’t mind, really. Jason’s not here to take his time. He’s here to get his team back.

                Everything is so _fast_ , with Tony there. It’s beautiful. In that first rush of fighting, before the men in the cave realize that every single one of them is fucked, Jason, Bucky, and Tony work as a unit.

                There are missteps, stumbles, failed handoffs; they’ll need to train together. They’re not perfect. Not yet.

                But there’s a series of perfect moments, caught in the middle of all the death. There’s Bucky, taking fire on his metal arm, and then Tony stepping in front of him, Bucky resting his rifle on the shoulder of the suit and taking out six guys in a row before the rest break and run. There’s Jason, dodging a knife, grabbing the man wielding it, and throwing him, and then Tony’s repulsor beam catching the man in mid-air, slamming him hard into the cave wall, leaving him crumpled in the dirt. And then there’s Tony and Bucky and Nat, disappearing into the dark of the side-tunnels, lit by the blue light of Tony’s arc reactor, while Jason stays behind.

                Jason wants to go with them. He’s got business with Ten Rings. He wants to teach them, with his hands, and his knives, and maybe his guns, if he starts to feel merciful, why it’s a bad idea to fuck with anyone on his team.

                But Barton’s on his knees, bloodied up, and someone needs to look after him.

                Jason gets the flyers to Barton, who stares dopily up at them for a moment and then spits lock picks into Sam’s open hand. “Oh, good,” he says, blinking his way back to awareness. There’s blood in his mouth, dark along his gum line. Keeping those lock picks in his mouth must’ve been hell. “Hospitality is shit around here. The continental breakfast is my own teeth. This is _bullshit_.”

                “Hey,” Riley says, hands sliding gently over Clint’s face, dropping to check his throat, his arms, his ribs. “You’re fun. Are you single?”

                “Nope,” Clint says, proudly.

                “Of course you aren’t,” Riley says, like he’s proud, too. “What about that redhead? You know her? Body like a Maxim cover, kick like a Goddamn Clydesdale?”

                “Oh,” Clint says, sighing happily, “that’s Nat. Is she here?”

                “Sure,” Jason says, with a nod. “Can’t you hear the screams?”

                And then, right on cue, there’s a shriek that gurgles into nothing, and it could’ve been Bucky, could’ve been Nat, could’ve been _Tony_ , but Clint’s whole face eases up, like all his problems are solved. “That’s my girl,” he says, with a sweet, nightmare smile.

                “Where’s Coulson?” Jason asks, and Clint blinks for a second, grimaces, and then lifts a hand and points up the tunnel behind them.

                “Twenty yards up,” he says, “door to the right. He’s probably out of the cuffs by now. He’s gonna be so pissed.”

                Jason nods and nudges Wilson, tips his head up the tunnel. “C’mon,” he says. “He probably needs a medic.” It doesn’t feel right, leaving Clint, but anyone trying to get to Clint will have to get past Bucky, Tony, and Nat, and Jason can’t imagine anyone in the world who could manage that, not after Natasha got a solid look at the mess they made out of Clint.

                Wilson drops a glance at Riley, who draws one of his holstered submachine guns and pulls Clint against the wall, settles in front of him like it’s nothing, and then Wilson nods and follows right after Jason, who moves quick, so he can get back fast, just in case.

                When they find Coulson, he’s standing inside the door, holding a fist-sized rocks in his hand, looking like some lost geologist, waiting for his research assistant. “Oh, hello,” he says, to Jason, like he’s been expecting him for a while. There’s dark bruising around the blade of his jaw, the outline of fingers on his throat, a hell of a shiner forming over one eye and stretching across his nose. His white button-down is stained with blood, but, when holds his hand out expectantly, Jason passes him a gun. “How’s Hawkeye?”

                “Oh, you know,” Jason says, with a shrug. “Straining the limits of SHIELD’s dental policy.”

                “Of course,” Coulson says. He studies the gun for a second and then looks up. There’s something in his eyes, in that moment, that reminds Jason of Natasha on a bad one, and Grayson, when that temper of his overwhelms his better nature. Something dangerous, something hungry. “Well,” he says, “let’s clean up this mess.”

 

 

 

                The doctors on base run a blood test and then sedate Clint as soon as it comes back clean, which is standard practice for dealing with Clint when he’s getting treated anywhere that isn’t SHIELD Medical. He’s a runner, has a hell of a flight instinct when it comes to medical care, and he’s much more complaint, once he’s too out of it to coordinate an escape attempt.

                Natasha settles at his bedside and starts cleaning her knives. Jason brings her coffee. A few minutes later, Wilson and Riley show up with dinner. Tony and Bucky station themselves in a back corner, out of the way, and everyone behaves admirably, really, except Phil Coulson.

                Coulson shows up to the exam room nearly ten minutes later than everyone else, makes no apologies for disappearing, and then doesn’t so much refuse medical care as completely ignore it. He allows the doctors to treat him, lets them remove his shirt and undershirt, clean off the blood, and sew him up, but only while he’s standing beside Clint’s bed, reading Clint’s chart, interrogating Clint’s doctors, and checking in with various military personnel about the cleanup operation currently taking place at the Ten Rings’ cave.

                As soon as the doctors have verified that Clint’s going to recover, should be field-ready in two or three weeks, and won’t even lose any teeth if he’s careful, Coulson pulls his undershirt back on, dodges neatly away from the doctor still bandaging a few cuts on his arms, and tapes the gauze down himself as he makes his way out of the room. Jason stares after him, shocked and affronted, because he’s spent hours of his life listening to Coulson bitch about the rest of them bailing out of Medical before they’re cleared, and he cannot _believe_ Coulson is pulling this shit right now.

                “Coulson,” Jason says, as he follows him into the hallway, with Bucky and Tony falling in at his heels. “Phil, what the _hell_?”

                “I’ve got to report in,” Coulson says, calmly. “Fury will need an update. Stay here.” And then he walks outside, deliberately distances himself from anyone or anything likely to listen in, and pulls what looks suspiciously like a burner phone out of his pocket.

                “Holy shit,” Jason says, nudging Bucky. He points at the figure of Coulson, barely visible through the window. “Are you seeing this?”

                “Probably calling off a STRIKE team,” Bucky says, because he’s got no imagination. Or maybe because he respects Coulson’s privacy.

                “Hey, Tony,” Jason says, “please tell me you can track that call.”

                Tony’s still in the suit, either because he can’t actually get out of it without his robots, or because he’s got the good sense not to show his face on a military base. “Well…” He shrugs, seems caught between his endless curiosity and his sense of basic decency, in a way that Bruce Wayne never is. “I _could_. Maybe. Probably, yeah, I could---”

                “No,” Jason says, regretfully. “Never mind.” Beside him, he feels Bucky relax, but he doesn’t look at the approving smile Bucky shoots his way, because he doesn’t need a pat on the head for abiding by basic laws of civility. “Forget it. Coulson can have a secret friend if he wants one.”

                “Secret _friend_?” Tony laughs, and it sounds odd, filtered through the suit’s speakers, but not unpleasant. “C’mon. Coulson just left medical after a near-death experience to call someone on a _flip phone_. Whoever he’s talking to, he’s definitely fucking.”

                “ _Woah_ ,” Jason says, legitimately, honest-to-God scandalized. “Coulson’s not fucking anyone.”

                Tony turns to stare at him. The suit’s eyes glow, and he laughs that rattling laugh again.

                “He _isn’t_ ,” Jason insists, because it’s a horrifying thought. “Coulson is our maiden aunt, and he’s not fucking anyone.”

                “Sure,” Bucky says, patting Jason on the shoulder reassuringly. “It’s all very chaste. Poetry and flowers. They do the Sunday crossword together. In separate beds.”

                “Hand-holding at sunset,” Tony says, and Jason can’t see his face, but he’d bet every gun he has that there’s a shit-eating grin under that faceplate. “When they’re feeling bold.”

                “Fuck both of you,” Jason says, rolling his eyes.

                “When we get home,” Tony says.

                _When we get home_ , Jason thinks, and something clicks and settles in his chest, spreads warmth. He’s always loved the homecomings, when he and Bucky make their way back to Tony, when Bucky makes his way back to them, but he’s always hated waiting, hated being apart, hated the weeks and sometimes months of distance, of talking in coded words through phones or computers.

                He doesn’t know how Tony’s dealing with what they did today. With the violence, the blood, the lives he took in a cave so fucking similar to the one he’d been held in. He doesn’t know if Tony’s ever going to want to do this again.

                He knows that he should hope that he doesn’t. He knows it’s better for Tony, safer and saner and simpler, if he stays home.

                But he thinks about the way they fought together, the hours of buildup to the mission and the sweet, sharp boiling over of the fight, and he wants it, again and again, as many times as he can get.

                He looks at Tony, at the suit’s steadily glowing eyes, the bright blue of the arc reactor in his chest. He looks at Bucky, right beside him, still dirty from the fight, shoulders squared like he’s ready for the next one.

                He thinks, lost and giddy and a little awed, that they could topple empires, if they had to. The three of them, they could save the whole Goddamn world.

                “Hey,” a voice says, sounding hushed, almost strangled. “ _Hey_.”

                It’s Riley, with Sam Wilson right behind him. They both look a little shell-shocked. Jason thinks, for a second, that something’s gone wrong with Clint, but they’re only a few yards from the door to the examn room, and Natasha would yell for them, if she needed them.

                “Do you guys know Robin?” Riley asks, pointing over his shoulder, eyes wide with disbelief. “Is your sniper _dating Robin_? Because he just dropped from the ceiling, and I swear to God, he’s sitting at his bedside. I swear to you, in full Robin getup. They are _holding hands_. There’s some romantic shit going on in there.”

                “Is this a security breach?” Wilson looks justifiably alarmed. “Are we supposed to do something about this?”

                “No need,” Bucky says.

                “He’s a friend,” Tony adds, a second after that.

                “Yeah,” Jason says, a half-second later. “It’s a security breach. Go ahead, hit the alarm. I wanna see what he does about it.”

                Wilson hesitates. He looks toward Riley, who frowns for a second, glances between Jason and Bucky, and then, slowly, starts to grin. “You guys,” he says, “are a Goddamn party.” The way he says it makes them sound like a revelation, and Jason grins back, because, hell, he’s not _wrong_.

                “Alright,” Coulson says, as he walks up, burner phone hidden and regular, SHIELD-issued cell in his hand. “Fury wants us back as soon as Clint’s cleared for travel.” He looks at Tony, in his suit, and his expression is difficult to read, but Jason’s seen pride and exasperation on his face often enough to recognize them. “He wants you at the debriefing, if you’ll go.”

                Because Tony’s not SHIELD. He’s been clear about that. Tony’s not SHIELD, and he’s not military, and he’s not going to let anyone use his weapons for anything he doesn’t approve, not anymore.

                “Sure,” Tony says. “But I’m charging a consultation fee.”

                Coulson sighs. He looks exhausted but oddly at peace, even though, by Coulson’s standards, he’s half-naked in public. Usually, when Coulson’s lost his suit jacket and button-down by the end of an op, everything has gone to hell, and Jason’s weighed down with it, thinking desperately about days in bed, possibly hooked up to a saline or whiskey drip.

                But Coulson’s standing there, bruised but bandaged, and Clint’s off in medical, attended by Nat and Drake, and Bucky and Tony are waiting, ready and resolute, on either side of him. And Jason’s never felt a victory like this. Never really been able to go home after a fight without feeling like he had to hide it away, quarantine parts of himself until they’re needed again.

                The three of them, they’re not fully recovered. Not yet. Maybe they won’t ever be. Maybe they don’t _have_ to be. Maybe, if they’re together, that’ll be enough.

                “Hey,” Jason says, not even bothering to bite back his eager grin. He hooks his thumbs toward either side of them, thumps Bucky in the chest, hits Tony right above the arc reactor. “Coulson,” he says, “you take the kids home, huh? We’re gonna head back early.”

                Coulson blinks, but only because he’s too well-mannered to roll his eyes while the two Air Force boys are watching this whole thing play out like the world’s most interesting, deadliest daily soap. “Right,” he says, long-suffering, practically martyred. “Be at SHIELD in ten hours,” he says. “And be ready to explain how you ended up here, as exactly none of you are cleared to be in the field right now.”

                His eye slide to the flyers, who shuffle automatically into parade rest. Coulson’s eyebrows lift, and his mouth flattens, and Jason can’t blame him for being charmed, because, honestly, they got Natasha, too. “Gentlemen,” he says, politely, “your assistance is appreciated.”

                “Oh,” Riley says, with a smile. “We just got lost.”

                “Did you?” Coulson doesn’t bother to sound convinced.

                “Yeah,” Sam says. “That redhead gives really terrible directions.”

                Jason grins and shakes his head, hooks one hand in Bucky’s shirt and the other around Tony’s elbow. He tugs them forward, toward the door, toward their jet. They have ten hours. It’ll take less than five to get to DC.

                “C’mon,” he says, hauling them along. “I bet we can find a socket wrench in that jet somewhere.”

                They have, he knows, so much shit to work out. So many things they’ll need to figure out, so much to debate and argue over and fuck up. There’s always a crash, after every fight. Things never stay good forever.

                But it’s alright. It’ll be alright. They’re together. They’ll figure it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, everyone, for reading! That's the end of this particular arc. The next (and possibly final) fic in this verse will be loosely based around the events of _The Avengers_ and will include the introduction of two blondes to the team, to help balance out the wild brunette favoritism. 
> 
> Follow me [on tumblr](https://thepartyresponsible.tumblr.com/) for fic updates!


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